Look Like You've Seen A Ghost
by Rhoswen Eolande
Summary: A complete study of a fem Ichigo's life, from her earliest years through past the end of the series. Anime compliant, not manga compliant. Eventual IchiHitsu, ByaIchi in a gender equal polygamous Soul Society.
1. Chapter 1

1.

My story starts the way it should end: with death.

I was born and raised in a prefecture of Tokyo city, a suburban district, called Karakura. My father was a doctor who ran a small self-made hospital from the bottom and front part of our house. This is a common thing in Japan: for people to live behind and above their own small businesses, in a compact, neat, two story arrangement, hundreds of little building squished together down long streets. Tokyo is miraculously clean for a city, a point of pride for its occupants, but somehow there never seems to be enough space. Japan has one hundred twenty seven million people, all cramped onto a tiny island chain in the middle of the ocean with the square mileage of about one hundred forty five thousand miles in total. One hundred thousand miles for one hundred million people - and most of those people live in the cities. About thirteen million people live in the city of Tokyo alone at the last estimate, all divided up into forty seven prefectures. Karakura was just one of them.

So my parents and I all lived and worked in the same compact two-story house. The tiny hospital took up most of the bottom floor, and my parents worked there tirelessly all day. My father was the doctor; my mother was the nurse. They were the only two workers, employees and employers both. Our combined living room, family room, dining room, and kitchen - all one space - was behind the hospital. On the bottom floor was one bedroom, set off to the side. Up the stairs on the top floor were two more bedrooms and the single bathroom that didn't belong to the hospital. All the storage space? In the bedroom closets. There was a small space at the bottom of the closet for clothes; the rest was all fold-out shelving.

Our hospital was simply titled. We were the Kurosaki family, and our sign read: Kurosaki Clinic. We sold our appeal based on the fact that we were a family business who knew everyone in the neighborhood, was nearby, and charged affordably. This selling point was necessary, because we weren't open 24 hours a day - though you could probably knock or doorbell ring us into wakefulness, and some people did - and we didn't have many of the amenities that larger facilities did. We couldn't, for example, do major surgery.

That doesn't mean nobody ever died in our clinic, though, and that's where my story begins.

In my first memory, I was about three years old. I was sitting on a colorful little rug in the family room, imaginary playing with some toys. I made the purple dinosaurs and teddy bears climb fast over invisible hills and crash into each other with great mouth noises. (In my mind, the teddy bears were the size of buildings and were at war in a magical forest with the dinosaurs. This made perfect sense to me as a three year old girl.)

Suddenly, there was a great shout from the direction of the hospital and I looked around quickly.

My Dad was in his side office, screaming over the phone at the major Karakura City Hospital, which he did a lot. They didn't like taking patients from his clinic, not even when the patients were dying and the Karakura City Hospital was the only thing that could save them. Dad grumbled often about the head of Karakura City Hospital blacklisting him. Apparently they knew each other, though I had no idea how.

"Tell Ishida Ryuuken to go fuck himself with a rusty metal pole!" my father shouted into the phone. Then he hung up on the receptionist and slammed the phone back down on the desk. "Damnit!"

"Isshin!" I heard my mother call from the long hospital room down the hall, sounding panicked, and I knew it was serious because she had called him by his real name and usually around me my parents called each other Mother and Father.

I could not recall my mother ever sounding panicked before, and I still remember how angry my father was as he stormed back down the hospital hallway. I heard distant shouting and slamming. Morbidly curious, knowing I shouldn't approach but unable to help myself, I stood up and toddled down the hospital hallway, down the long concrete and linoleum my father had paid to have installed to give the hospital a more authentic feel, past the stinging-smelling containers of wipes and antiseptics hanging from the wall, turned at the gleaming glass front door with the bell over it carrying a sign announcing hospital hours, and went into the main hospital wing.

It was simple, a long room, the separating wall having been torn out, lined with neat rows of clean, sterilized hospital beds with white sheets. A window on the far left side often shone cheerful sunlight onto the space through the pretty white curtains - my mother's touch - though today the sky was heavy, still, and grey like a stone.

My parents were standing around the only occupied hospital bed, and I could still picture them now: The tall, mountainous, broad-shouldered figure of my father, square-chested like a boxer with a closely shorn head of dark hair and a beard, the kind of man who looked like he could get through anything, save anyone. And my mother, slim and pretty, with long brown curls, her normally serene and implacable face riddled over with pity and pain.

In between them on the hospital bed was a skinny old silvery-haired man. He did not look small and feeble, not even then. He was tall, trim, and in good shape, wearing fairly nice clothes. But he wasn't breathing, his eyes were closed, and the machine beside him was ringing in a flatline - his heart had stopped. I still remember his bare ribs, his leathery brown chest, his shirt torn open as my father pounded on him and pounded on him with instruments called defibrillators that looked like clothes irons but were really trying to shock the old man's heart back into wakefulness using electricity.

I remember my father pounding on him and pounding on him. I hung onto the corner of the doorway, wincing as I heard a rib crack. Nothing worked. Finally, my father gave up, the horrible ringing continuing. He defeatedly turned off the heart rate monitor and the ringing stopped. There was a moment's pause, my mother watching my father quietly. My father was an emotional man, and after a moment he turned around and flung something across the room.

"Fuck!" he shouted, oblivious as the instrument cracked and dented the wall.

Another pause. "... I'll go call his family," my mother said quietly, understanding. She walked to the door calmly, and then paused in surprise as she saw me standing there, her three year old daughter. "How long have you been there?" she demanded. I lowered my head, silent with shame. My mother sighed, instead of getting angry. "Father, I think you should have a talk with our daughter on people dying in hospitals even when doctors try to help them," she said meaningfully, and left to walk down the hall to my father's office and make the call to the family.

My father turned to look at me, and the sight of me seemed to calm him some. My father was one of those strange men who had actually wanted a daughter - badly. He loved smothering me with hugs and kisses, making me and my mother laugh with goofy antics, and he'd quit smoking the day he found out he was having a baby girl. He was a total spazz off the job, but he was a doting husband and father.

"Best to joke along with your father," my mother advised me once. "In a weird way I think it gives him life."

So now my father knelt down to my level, and I walked over to him. "What happens when a person dies?" I asked, staring up at him.

"Well…" He seemed to be having some sort of internal struggle. "Their soul goes to another place," he said at last. "And then, eventually, they become a baby again and get reborn as a brand new person."

This was a very hard concept for me to grasp. I thought about it for a long time.

"But… hospitals are here so that we make sure that doesn't happen," I said, confirming.

"We try to help people live as long as they can. Most people want to live a really long time," said my father seriously, nodding. Then he stood and made a fist, laughing it off, as he did with most serious things. "Do not worry, my daughter!" he cried, ever the one with the flare for drama. "I will protect everyone from the bad things!"

I knew it was cruel even then, but I had an important question I couldn't quite formulate and I couldn't help pointing it out: "But you didn't protect him. He died."

My father became somber once more. "Yes," he said. "Well, this is very important, my daughter Ichigo. Always remember. Even the people who make it their job to save other people? Even they can't save everyone all the time."

I nodded, looking around at the body of the old man. Then I stopped and blinked in surprise. "Daddy?" I said. "I don't think that man's really dead."

My father looked puzzled, then pitying. "Now, Ichigo, I know this is hard, but -"

"No, Daddy. He must have a twin. There are two of them," I said firmly, pointing. "And one is standing by the other one's bed."

The other old man looked up. Sure enough, there were two of them, and the second one looked and was dressed just like the first, though his shirt was still closed up and his ribs were undamaged. The standing old man stared at me, sunken eyes dark and haunted.

"You… you can see me?" he whispered. We locked gazes for a moment.

"... Ichigo?" said my father quietly. "There's only one person there. It's the dead one lying on the hospital bed."

I frowned. "But there's more, Daddy!" I said, stomping my foot, angry tears in my eyes. I was irrationally upset. "There's a second one!" I walked up fearlessly to the second old man. "Who are you?!" I demanded, pointing up at him.

The man blinked. "My name is Shura," he said in an uncertain, shaky voice. "I was a professor of classical literature at the local university."

I turned around to my father. "His name is Shura," I said, crossing my arms, as if this proved everything. "He was a professor of classical literature at the local university."

My father became angry, starting toward me. "How did you get a hold of his file -?! Wait a minute. You can't read. And you were in the family room." His eyes widened. "How long have you been over there?" He pointed at the door.

I shrugged. "I don't know, maybe a minute?"

"I came in because I had a minor heart attack. I had a major one while I was here," Shura continued quickly to me, and I repeated the information back to my father exactly as Shura had said it, word for word.

I must have seemed very strange: pausing, listening, then relaying back information I could not possibly have known. For my parents, I would realize later, there was no second man. It was as if I was listening to nothing. My father had grown very, unusually pale.

One piece of information clinched it.

"Right before he had the second heart attack," I said slowly, listening, "... he told you that the last thing he'd done before coming here was argue over the phone with his grown daughter. And… now he regrets it," I finished softly, listening. I was a daughter with a father, so this greatly affected me.

My father stared at me for a long moment. Then he called without looking away, "... Masaki!"

Again, serious. This was my mother's given name.

She ran in, as alarmed as I was, and said, "What is it?!"

My father turned to my mother, his expression unusually stilted, and he said, in a tone I couldn't define, "... Our daughter can see dead people."

My mother gasped and turned to look at me, struck silent. "... Ichigo," she said tremblingly at last, "can you see that man?"

"Yes, Mommy, but I don't understand! He's not dead! He's right there!" I said, urgent and afraid.

"Little girl, that is my body. What you are talking to is my soul, the part of me that moves on." I turned slowly to stare up into the dark, sunken eyes of the old man. "Little girl, don't you understand?

"I'm dead."


	2. Chapter 2

2.

It's a very alienating thing, seeing ghosts as a living person. That's not something you'd consciously expect - the alienation. When you hear of a little girl seeing ghosts, you think of a horror movie, you become frightened - if you're alive, that is. (The reality is far different. Ghosts themselves, dead imprints and spirits, are essentially physically crippled humans; they're mostly harmless.) If you're dead, you think of a miraculous person, a hero, when you think of one who can see ghosts. But I've found that no one, in literature or otherwise, ever really considers what it would be like psychologically, walking around seeing hundreds of people all about you that no one else can see, hear, or touch. An invisible network of spirits only you can tap into. That was what it was like for me. It put a distance between myself and others, and not always a good one.

I was doubly marked. I learned from the early age of three years old that I could see dead spirits, that they were just as real to me as living people, and that neither of my parents had the same ability that I did. I was a little girl who could see the dead, who in fact could not tell the difference between the living and the dead. But even someone just looking at me visually could tell I was different.

I had warm brown eyes - that was normal - and hair that fell down around my chin, framing a heart shaped face - that was normal - and naturally pumpkin colored orange hair - not so normal. I'm not talking reddish orange; I'm talking plain, bold orange. The hair color didn't run in either side of my family, making it even stranger. Add in the fact that my hair was naturally, perpetually a shaggy mess, and also add in the fact that my skin had deep gold undertones uncommon in a traditional Japanese girl, and you had one odd-looking little thing. In a country that was highly homogeneous and full of people with straight dark hair and a lighter skin tone, parents used to ask my mother when she took me to the park if I was "hafu" - half Japanese.

(Spoiler alert: I wasn't. I was just weird-looking.)

"But she has such a non traditional appearance!" I remember one mother exclaiming in surprise, as I played with her little toddler daughter off to the side. "Look at that wide mouth and those eyebrows!"

My eyebrows were indeed strange, I supposed, thin, curling and expressive. And I supposed my mouth was a bit big. I had never really noticed before.

"But look! Her nose is Japanese! See!" My mother pointed brightly. I had a sharp, pointed little nose.

"Exactly! Hafu!" said the woman, frustrated.

"She's not hafu," my mother laughed, shaking her head. "My husband's name is Isshin; he's Japanese like I am."

I did not say what I was thinking, which was that I'd gotten the messy hair, big mouth, and expressive eyebrows from my father - the pointed nose, too. I supposed he must be Japanese, mustn't he? Even if he was rather big. His hair was black and his skin was lighter; his eyes were the correct shape, like mine. That was Japanese, right?

"Well, anyway." The woman waved my mother off. "Pictures!" She held up her camera brightly, and despite my annoyance she ushered me in closer for a photograph with her daughter. My mother smiled at me from behind the woman with the camera, apologetic and sympathetic.

Back then, when I was young, I was not to blame for my strangeness. So I became a sort of spectacle, a point of interest for passing Japanese. Everyone wanted me to take pictures with their children. Only later, when I got older, would I begin to be blamed and mistrusted for my hair color, would it be taken as a personal sign of rebellion against prized homogeneity.

Why am I spending so long telling this story? Because it illustrates a point. From before I can remember, I was treated differently. And from my first living memory - which is of seeing a ghost at three years old - I felt different.

I didn't want to talk to dead people. I didn't want to be different. Some people might find power in that, but instead it frightened me. At first I thought I would only avoid ghosts, perhaps ducking into an alley if I passed one, but after a few very embarrassing and frightening instances of finding out after several minutes that I was apparently talking to thin air on a playground, I realized I had one problem.

I couldn't tell the living from the dead. They all looked the same to me.

So after that it seemed my only option was closing myself off from society completely. I literally took to sitting dramatically inside a closet within my house, refusing to come out except for bathroom breaks and insisting my food be shoved at me through the wardrobe door.

"What, are you just going to live in our closet forever?" both my father and my mother asked me more than once, exasperated.

"Yes!" I called back through the closet door. I was nothing if not stubborn, and I held out like this for several days.

Finally, my parents came into the wardrobe and sat down on either side of me.

"You know," said my Dad, "seeing dead people is kind of cool. You could grow up to be, like… a psychic. You could be a superhero!"

"Don't wanna be a superhero," I muttered sullenly.

"Come on, you should see this as a gift -!" my Dad began enthusiastically.

"People treat me different. They stare at me a lot."

He paused.

"I was already different," I said, blinking back angry tears. "People already stared at me. Now I'm even more different and they stare at me even more. I don't wanna be somebody special. I just want to be a normal girl named Ichigo."

My father just looked at me, stumped. Here, there was a total misconnection. He couldn't identify with that at all. I could not imagine my father ever wanting to be normal once in his entire life.

But my mother, as usual, provided the voice of reason.

"Well," she said, "you can still be a normal girl named Ichigo." I glared at her. "No, I'm serious," she said. "You're afraid of seeing ghosts because you think it makes you a different person. Why does it have to make you a different person? Why can't you just be the same person, who happens to see ghosts?"

"But people look at me -"

My mother sighed and stood up. "At some point, Ichigo," she said, giving me a meaningful stare, "you're going to have to stop letting it bother you when other people look at you. When you see a beautiful, rare, and exotic flower in a store, what do you do?

"You look at it."

She walked firmly back out of the wardrobe.

I stared after her, as my father smiled wryly. "Listen to your mother," he advised me. Then he leaned forward conspiratorially. "Good things always happen to me when I do." And he stood up and left the wardrobe as well.

Eventually, when I thought no one was looking, I shuffled sheepishly out of the wardrobe and off to color. I began drawing all the brightest, most beautiful flowers I could muster with my toddler ability, and they were all colored orange.

My mother paused behind me once and smiled, but said nothing. Later, before bedtime, she began reading to me stories of Narnia, saving my pride by pretending that the story's magic land was what I'd been looking for in the wardrobe all along.

After that, being different came a little easier. If I just thought about people looking at me because I was a thing of beauty, magically, my self-confidence grew. They were just looking at how spectacular I was, I told myself.

I smiled bigger for pictures as a supposed "hafu," and I began interacting with the world again. I explored ghosts curiously, talking to them more freely. I found out an easy way to tell if somebody was a ghost was if they were doing something like picking their nose or scratching their crotch in a highly public place, and no one was looking at them.

I began going up to them, having conversations with them. I found out that not all dead people became ghosts, but the ones who did hung around until the fearful, mysterious day when one by one they each began disappearing. It was an ever replenishing population, always full of new contacts.

For some reason, I could see some ghosts easier than others. I found the ghosts I could see easiest were always floating a bit and slightly transparent, and they had chains hanging from their chests. They assured me all ghosts looked like this - some of them I just couldn't see too well.

I learned this early on: Fears are more manageable when confronted and dealt with reasonably. Once I began interacting with ghosts more, I had embarrassing public incidents less. They didn't go away completely - not yet - but for now I found I could just fake it and say I'd been playing pretend.

And everybody bought it. Kids played pretend all the time. I was just, for most people, a really imaginative hafu kid. Only my parents knew the truth.


	3. Chapter 3

3.

I first discovered the peculiar power of names when stories were read to me before bed as a child.

After a while, I noticed a certain trend. All the characters' names in the books meant something. Their names were a reflection of their role in life, who they were. I was caught by this romantic idea - by the implicit power of names.

I was still a young enough child that I decided my name must have some powerful meaning too, and I decided to find out what it was.

So over dinner one night, I asked my parents in a tiny voice, my head barely reaching over the table: "What does my name mean?"

They looked at each other.

"Well," said my mother, "your name has two meanings. The first one is 'strawberry.' Ichigo means strawberry."

I pouted. "That's not very powerful."

"But it's a cute, pretty name -!" my mother protested, I think mostly because she was much girlier than I was, with refined sweaters and long skirts, makeup and perfume, but my father was chuckling.

"If you want power in your name, how's this?" he said mischievously. "Your other name meaning is 'to protect one thing' or 'one who protects.' I decided my first child, boy or girl, had to have this name. It's a girl's name, and you turned out to be a girl, so we got very lucky."

"You're telling me as a boy, you'd have made me walk around with a girl's name?" I asked disbelievingly.

"Yup!" He smiled cheerfully and gave me a thumbs up. My mother sighed and shook her head.

But the idea of this name meaning caught at me, nonetheless. I thought about it. I was the oldest, the big sister if I ever had any younger siblings, first child, responsible one. And my name meant 'to protect.' I was one who protected. That was my role in life.

For the first time, I considered myself as a hero, a protector - saving the people around me who were in pain. Being a protector would take a lot of courage, I decided. So I had to be up to the task.

Who did I want to protect? Well, there was only one obvious choice. The people I wanted to protect most in the world right now were my parents. How did I go about doing that?

I was a girl, and had unconsciously I think imbibed the idea that girls were not strong fighters. How did girls protect? They were lovers, mothers and wives. They nurtured, made food, took care of people, healed their bumps and bruises, offered advice, protected from harm.

I was very attached to my home and very admiring of my own mother. I quickly grew from there to like the idea of becoming a mother myself. A nurturing, caring, protecting mother figure.

So earnestly, feeling very important, I began trying to be like my mother. My mother was always calm and cheerful, nurturing and caring, loving. She was the center of the universe, and with her anything was possible, nothing was too painful or difficult to be overcome.

I decided from an early age that my mother was the person to aspire to. I wanted to be just like my mother.

"Mommy," I told her, looking up at her, "I want to be like you," and she smiled, touched.

I started following her around in the kitchen, trying to make food when she made food, and help her clean, and hum while I was doing work like she did. I began trying to do novice nursing duties in the hospital, and I tried healing my own bruises and cuts with clumsy antiseptic and band-aids.

I must have looked very silly, trying to make food and be a mother as a little toddler girl, but neither of my parents ever asked me what I was doing. Instead, my father often shouted dramatic words of encouragement, and my mother bought me a child's little plastic kitchen set for me to work at.

I found to my frustration that I was not like my mother. I was impatient with my duties, emotional when they didn't work out. And I was much more snappish than my mother, more of a mother hen, bossing around my toys. But this never bothered me for long. I always just reminded myself how awesome I truly was, and it went away.

My mother guided me gently, trying I think to be loving and encouraging instead of criticizing. Slowly, I became comfortable seeing myself as a mothering figure. I came to genuinely care when I was seeing other people in pain.

Once, I walked up to a man who had fallen down in the street and offered him a hand up. He stared at me in surprise.

I sighed, exasperated. "Well, come on!" I said, expressive in my impatience. "You have to stand up!"

The man looked at my mother and they shared a smile I couldn't decipher as a young child. Then he took my hand and pretended kindly that it helped him get up. Solemnly, I reached into my pocket and offered him a band-aid.

He took it, bemused.

But for the most part I found I couldn't do much for my parents as they were now. They were too much more experienced than me. I dreamed of one day becoming big enough that I could be a nurturing, protecting, sometimes scolding figure for other people.

I was a protector, I told myself. I was on my way.


	4. Chapter 4

4.

It was as my mother's belly began to get rounder that the announcement came.

"We're having another child!" my parents told me, excited, standing before me in the sunny yellow kitchen one day. I gave them a big smile, but inside I was uncertain.

I spent the following days wondering. What would it be like to have a new younger sibling? Would my parents love me less? Would the new younger child take up most of their time? Would I have to move out? I didn't want to move out of my home yet!

I became increasingly panicked, before telling myself to calm down. If moving out was what I had to do, then moving out was what I had to do.

My mother walked into my upstairs bedroom one day to find me packing a tiny suitcase with all the seriousness and solemnity of one who was going off to war. "Ichigo-chan, what on earth are you doing?" she said, puzzled.

"I'm preparing," I said with a heavy heart, "for moving out."

"Why would you have to move out?" She looked even more puzzled.

"Because the new baby is coming," I said, staring up at her.

I swear I saw her repress a smile. "Ichigo-chan," she said, smiling, bending down and ruffling my hair, "just because a parent is having a second baby, doesn't mean the first baby will have to move out. We'll love you both equally. Promise."

After a moment I saw that she was serious, and I smiled, a great balloon of relief and elation filling me. "Okay," I said, grinning, hands behind my back.

Over the following months I watched my mother go through all the stages of pregnancy: the sickness, the food cravings, all of it. It seemed her stomach would never stop expanding. I was amazed. How did she hold all that around everywhere she went? I asked her that once. She laughed and said, "I manage."

Then came the surprise announcement: as my mother lay on the hospital bed in our clinic, my father stared in puzzlement at the ultrasound - sheets of paper taken by a machine showing the interior of my mother's abdomen, the unborn baby beneath the skin.

"What is it?" I asked, curious, standing by my mother's bedside and holding her hand (which I found a very adult and motherly thing to do).

"... We're having twins," said my father in befuddled amazement. "Two more girls."

My mother gasped in delight. A natural mother, nothing seemed to give her more satisfaction than having a family. "Fraternal or identical?!" she asked excitedly.

My father smiled at her weakly, still shell shocked. "Fraternal," he confirmed.

My mother squealed. "Aah! Ichigo-chan, you're going to have two little sisters!" She beamed at me excitedly, and I smiled in return though confused.

"What does fraternal mean?" I asked.

"It means that even though they're twins, they're going to look different," my father explained. Then, slowly, excitement filled him. "What - I can't believe what I'm saying, I'm having twins! I'm having twins!" I saw several emotions pass across his face: fear, euphoria, amazement. He ran forward and hugged my Mom, who was laughing.

Then they pulled me into the hug and inside my mother's warm stomach, I felt the twin girls kick.

One morning, my mother paled over breakfast. "Isshin," she said with false calm, "it's time." My father's eyes widened, and he ran to get the hospital wheelchair.

I wasn't supposed to be there for the birth, but everything was so chaotic between my parents at the Kurosaki Clinic that day, I managed to sneak in and watch from the corner. How to describe watching childbirth? Terrifying, disgusting, wonderful. I'd seen death in the hospital; now I saw new life, the other end of the spectrum. There was a kind of dichotomy to it: the horrible screaming pain of the mother, and the amazing emergence of two full, moist newborn people.

After my mother had calmed down, pale, hair sticking with sweat to her face, and after the umbilical cord had been cut and the babies had been washed, they were deposited into my mother's arms, one on each arm. She gazed at them warmly, my father standing over her with love and delight in his eyes. They looked like the perfect family, and I remember feeling a moment of clear panic, worried that there would be no place for me in it.

Then my mother looked up and smiled. Her smile reminded me of a candle, filling her whole being with light. "Ichigo-chan," she said, "come and meet your new little sisters."

I walked over, climbed with difficulty up onto the hospital bed, and looked down into the babies faces. "They're really small," I whispered in awe, gazing at the tiny clenched fists, the round pink faces, the shut little eyes.

And I fell in love. Completely and totally. That was when they became little sisters to me. Protection and love filled me. My previous doubts were all forgotten.

"We've decided on the names Karin and Yuzu," said my Dad. "Which one should be which?"

I was amazed that I would be allowed such an important decision. I stared wide-eyed at my smiling parents for a moment, then looked down seriously into the two faces, analyzing them. One looked a little more solemn, one a little more happy and relaxed. One had a head of dark hair like Dad's, the other a head of brown hair like Mom's.

I pointed to the solemn one with dark hair. "Karin," I said. Then I pointed to the happy and relaxed one with brown hair. "Yuzu."

And so they were.

Over the following days, I took over becoming a second mother to my little sisters. Here, at last, was someone I could lavish all my protective, loving, motherly affection on - two people in fact. I helped feed and change them as best I could, told them stories, and spent hours talking to them and smiling at them and dangling toys over them. I noticed some trends: Karin was more serious and less prone to crying but also crankier and fussier, while Yuzu cried about ten times a day but also had big gummy smiles for everyone and everything she saw.

I think the first role I was really happy in, ironically given my previous reservations, was that of a big sister.

Still, Mom was the head of the household - not Dad, but Mom. Ours was a matriarchy, though a gentle one. The whole house revolved around Mom, the rock, around her steady and loving guidance. I aspired toward such steadiness, such innate attraction, even as I revolved around her like everyone else, planets orbiting around the sun. I wanted so badly to be like my Mom, to be someone strong people could turn to in troubled times, to be someone who seemingly effortlessly got everyone she met to like her.

I wasn't my Mom, though. I was fiery and impatient, short tempered and irritable, arrogant instead of confident. I was not like my mother. For now, that was okay.

We took a trip to the seaside one summer during that first year. We slathered ourselves in sunscreen and put on bathing suits, swam in the ocean, made sandcastles underneath the umbrella, picked up seashells. Dad goofed off and did funny things for us, various faces and positions, sticking out his tongue, standing on his hands - anything, to get us to laugh. The more daughters my father had, the more animated and affectionate he seemed to become. And we all laughed along, willingly. We had a bonfire and barbecue on the beach that night, all of us sitting around a gigantic fire roasting anything we could put on a toasting fork, the stars clear above us.

We were a whole family, complete and happy. I still look at pictures of that time, snapshots of a perfect era in our lives.


	5. Chapter 5

5.

My mother walked me up to the vast school building, holding my hand. It was my first day of school. I was wearing leggings and a sweater with a uniform blouse and skirt. It was a chilly January morning. My mother had tried to straighten my pumpkin colored hair, but it hadn't worked, falling down around my chin in its own typically haphazard way. Over my shoulders was a plastic black backpack with big pink polka dots.

"Mommy," I said, looking up at her, "I don't wanna go to school."

"You don't want to learn so you can get a good job and become an adult someday and buy everything you ever wanted?" she asked.

"No," I said honestly. "I don't want to become an adult at all."

She sighed and knelt down to my level. "It won't be that bad," she said. "Be a big brave girl for me, okay? It's only for a few hours. I'll come back to pick you up at 2:30."

That sounded like a long time away, but I didn't want to sound like a wimp so I said in a small voice, "... Okay."

My mother smiled at me. "Just remember: you're smart, beautiful, special, and loved. Okay?"

At last, I smiled back. "Okay," I said. She hugged me goodbye, kissed me on the cheek, and left. I took a deep breath, and walked toward the front doors.

It was easy to see where everyone was going. They were all meandering toward and gathering in a big auditorium down the hall, uniformed students sitting in rows. I sat uncertainly in a seat at the back, gazing around myself.

Soon enough, the principal came up to the podium and started talking, giving out announcements. Within five minutes, everyone had completely zoned out. And that was my introduction to school.

There was chaos after we were released. "Class one B! Class one B, over here!" I struggled through the crowds toward the shouting woman, and all of the new class B students followed our teacher to our new classroom, in the center of which was a big blue rug.

In the classroom, we all sat on the floor in a circle and listened to the teacher read us a book and go through some flashcards with us. There was only one teacher, but the subjects were gone through in fifty minute class periods, like in an upper division school. During the second lesson, we stopped for a snack break, which doubled as a counting lesson, and a loud and frightening girl named Tatsuki punched some poor kid across the face for trying to steal her fruit and her carton of milk. He went down in a single blow.

"Tatsuki!" the teacher scolded, outraged.

"He tried to steal my stuff, Sensei," said Tatsuki firmly, her arms crossed.

"Go to the principal's office!" the teacher demanded.

Tatsuki walked out of the classroom to a chorus of terrified whispers with her head held high. I stared after her with wide, shocked eyes.

After that we had more class-time - the third class consisting of novice, clumsy writing, and the fourth class consisting of a history lesson.

Japanese elementary school education mainly consisted of language, social studies, arithmetic, and science, with language being a major emphasis due to its complexity. We also learned art and calligraphy and handicrafts, music, haiku poetry, home ec, phys ed, and "moral education" (an idiot's guide to being a nice person).

I found I was good at school. I had a natural talent for it.

Then, just as I was getting used to the way things went, it was time for lunch and recess. Lunch was taken inside the classroom. Four students were assigned to go to the school kitchens, and they came back with obento lunches for everyone. Different people got the lunches for everyone each day. I took my obento and looked down into it. Curry, boiled vegetables, a sandwich, a salad, a container of milk, and a scoop of ice cream.

The teacher gave us a lesson on health and food nutrition while we ate. Once we were all finished, she announced, "You have a twenty minute recess. The four students who got lunches will stay and help me clean up the classroom. When you are chosen to get lunches, it will be your turn to stay and clean."

We ran out into the play yard, and I looked around myself in growing excitement. A group of girls gathered underneath a skeletal blue tree giggling, some kids including Tatsuki having a snowball fight. I walked over to an uncertain looking little boy standing in a corner, alone.

"Hi," I said shyly, smiling. "Can I join you?"

He turned to stare at me and I knew I'd said something wrong, because his mouth opened and closed like a fish.

"Hey! Kurosaki still has imaginary friends!" I whirled around. Three boys were standing there laughing at me.

"I don't know, maybe she's just crazy," the second boy suggested. "She's weird enough looking."

"Wha - what are you talking about?" I stammered, backing up, big eyed.

"Wha - what are you talking about?" the first boy mimicked me in a high voice, and the other two laughed. "We mean that you just said hi to an invisible person, Kurosaki. There's nobody there."

The boy I was talking to - he'd died. He'd come back to his old school because he was dead.

"I'm not crazy!" I shouted angrily, humiliating tears filling my eyes. "I'm not!" And I stormed away back toward the classroom, everyone staring at me as I passed. Tatsuki and the others even stopped having their snowball fight to watch.

"Crybaby!" the boys called and jeered after me as I ran for the front doors.

By the end of the day it had gotten all over school that Kurosaki Ichigo was weird looking, she had imaginary friends, she talked to people who weren't really there, she saw dead people - the rumors varied, some closer than others. Worst of all, she was a crybaby.

Needless to say, I had zero luck making grade school friends after that.


	6. Chapter 6

6.

I was first attracted to joining karate and kendo classes because of the idea of tradition.

"Karate has been in our family for several generations," my father said loudly to thin air one day over dinner, "as has kendo."

My Mom leaned over to me. "He was hoping you'd take an interest yourself," she said in a loud mock whisper. Then she went back to helping feed two-year-old Karin and Yuzu.

"Really? Karate and kendo runs in our family?" I asked, curious.

My father nodded meaningfully. "For ages and ages," he assured me.

So I decided I wanted to try them. Maybe I was just naturally good at them.

This, of course, turned out not to be the case at all.

Karate and kendo both required different uniforms, and equipment - wooden swords for kendo, head and hand gear for karate. There were some other similarities. In both methods of fighting, one bowed before entering and leaving the mat. In both methods of fighting, one learned a series of movements as a class, then practiced using those movements in katas and spars. Both required lots of working out on top of all of that. I started doing kendo twice a week, and karate three times a week, after school.

And I sucked. Horribly.

An older girl with a brown ponytail and a fierce scowl named Asano Mizuho sighed as she watched me lag behind in the working out, panting for breath - as she watched me make clumsy movements - as she watched me cry embarrassingly every time I lost, which was always. She tried to help me out, showing me different movements.

"You've got to toughen up, Kurosaki," she told me. And I tried to. But I was too soft, wore my heart too much on my sleeve, to make for a good fighter. I was a nerd. I put my earnestness and fire into everything I did, and Mizuho just sighed. "Well," she said, "at least you're trying," which didn't make me feel better at all.

What was worse, Tatsuki the frightening girl was in my karate class. Up close, she had a spiky pixie cut of black hair and a hard gleam to her dark eyes. "You're in this class?" she asked me skeptically on that first day, looking me up and down.

"... Yeah," I said, scowling, timid and angry about the fact that I was timid. "So?" I lifted my chin, attempting confidence.

Tatsuki smirked. "I don't like girls like you," she said. "Sensei!" She called to the head of the class. "I want Kurosaki Ichigo to spar with me."

I swallowed, but held my ground. We got into stances, facing each other. I told myself I just had to last for a minute without getting knocked down.

Then Tatsuki swiped at me, plunged straight through my feeble guard, and knocked me to the ground in a hard blow. I fell on my butt - and began wailing, tears falling from my eyes.

Tatsuki sighed and rolled her eyes, standing back. "Geez," she muttered.

My mother would always come to pick me up, trying for a smile. I would run into her arms, but there would be no return smile. All I could think in shame was that my mother would not be so weak - this was just another way I was not like my mother, or even my father for that matter.

Mizuho watched in sympathy, Tatsuki with contempt.

Things weren't any better at school. I continued to be alienated, doing excellent in classes but making no friends. "Nerd," people called me, and I would shout and stamp my feet and make a big fool of myself, and people would laugh at me. Rumors about how weird I was continued to spread.

"... Mommy," I said one night, "can I be homeschooled?"

"Why?" she asked from where she was making a stew at the stove, caught off guard.

I didn't answer, staring down in consternation to where my sisters were pulling me in to play with them again. I was starting to think. The one thing that brought me joy was mothering my sisters, being at home with my parents. What if that was all I was good for?

What if I quit fighting and school altogether? It was a moment of terrible uncertainty, as close to an existential crisis as a child could get. I can still remember that torn feeling, the pain of knowing the distance between where you are, and where you want to be.


	7. Chapter 7

7.

At the tender age of eight years old, I almost decided to quit life.

Not in the physical suicide way. But in the sense of closing myself off from all human contact. Once when I was a small child, about four years old, I shut myself deep in a closet within my house because I didn't want to see ghosts. There was a stigma attached, and I thought that by closing my eyes, I could pretend the world was not there. This was just like that.

Children at school called me "freak" and "weirdo," because though my Sight had improved, I still had not mastered telling the difference between ghosts and living humans, making people think I spoke to the air. Ghosts appeared and disappeared in the time it took me to steep in childhood misery.

Meanwhile, in karate and kendo classes, everything was a mess. My older kendo mentor, Mizuho, despaired of ever teaching me proper swordsmanship. Tatsuki seemed to get a weird pleasure out of beating me and making me cry. I was wimpy, weak and flimsy, hopeless, always in tears, always falling behind.

I wanted to be strong, and cool, and level-headed. And I wasn't.

I seriously thought of quitting it all. Insisting on homeschooling (how I was to do this, I hadn't quite figured out) and quitting karate and kendo classes altogether. I found comfort in my family and my home. Why not just stick to that? I was troubled for several days as I pondered this.

Karin and Yuzu were getting older, becoming toddlers, developing personalities. Karin was calm, sassy and sarcastic, a bit of a tomboy, while Yuzu was bright, sweet, and girlish, her emotions open like mine but with no anger to mitigate. They could see ghosts, too. They started pointing at dead people who passed through our house and babbling from a very young age, so I'd begun mentoring them in the art of seeing the dead. I'd learned they could not see quite as well as I had at that age, almost like Seeing required a certain level of power and I had more of it.

I worried for them. I wanted them to succeed, my own success minimal and unimportant. Why not just give up, focus on them? But somehow, the idea of being a home-maker for the rest of my life dissatisfied me.

My parents knew something was wrong, and finally while I was helping her in the kitchen one day, my mother asked, reserved, "How are classes going?"

I drooped into defeated silence. My mother was my idol, the person I aspired to become, and I didn't want to tell her what a horrible failure I felt I was.

"... You know," said my mother after a while, her eyes still on the dumplings she was making everyone for lunch, four year old Karin and Yuzu playing on the floor nearby, "just because you're weak now, doesn't mean you always will be. I always thought you had great willpower, Ichigo. I thought that was what would get you far."

I looked up. "... Willpower?"

"Exactly. The most important thing for a fighter is to never give up," my Mom told me. "To be determined. To stick to your guns, and keep fighting for what you believe in. Do you see?"

"... But what if I'm not a fighter?" It was almost an admittance. "What if I don't have anything to believe in?"

"Then let me ask you this: Ichigo, why do you want to be like me?" My mother turned to look at me evenly.

"... Because you protect the people you love," I said. "You take care of them." This was obvious. I had no idea where she was going with it.

"Exactly. Ichigo, there are many ways to protect. A girl can nurture and be loving and tender… But she can also go on to be fierce on the battlefield."

"A girl can?" I asked disbelievingly. "But what about all the storybooks? Where a girl gets saved by a handsome prince?"

"They're just stories, Ichigo." My mother smiled wryly. "I've found in real life, the princess usually has to do the saving herself."

My eyes widened and a slow smile formed over my face as it all clicked into place in my head. "I can do both," I breathed. "I can be a protector in both ways."

My mother beamed. "And what does a true protector do?"

"She never gives up!" I raised my fists in a cheer.

"Very good," said my mother, and she went back to her cooking.

I decided I would not give up. I would keep on doing my best with school, and with helping Mom, and with seeing ghosts, and with fight classes. I was determined, I decided, to do it all.

So my Mom saved me twice: Once by reminding me that I was still at heart a beloved and normal person. Second by giving my the most important advice I would ever receive - that a girl could be a fighter, too. And if I really wanted to be a fighter and a protector, giving up would never be an option.

It was the last time I ever thought about backing down from anything.

I went to school the next day with my head held high. "Hey, look, it's -" one of my old bullies jeered in the hallway, and I stopped and turned such a disgusted glare on him that he was silenced.

I walked up to him - his friends backed away - he sucked in a sharp, afraid breath but held his ground. My anger hadn't abated. I took a page from my father's book. "You," I said poking him in the chest, "can just shut the fuck up."

There were gasps.

I turned around. "You think I care what any of you all think?!" I demanded, my fiery temper returning. "Huh?!" And then I walked into my classroom to amazed murmurs. I caught sight of Tatsuki, staring after me curiously.

And I ignored everyone around me in school with utter lack of care and complete contempt after that, focusing on getting good grades. During lunch and recess, I always volunteered to stay inside cleaning with the teacher.

This was actually the easy part. Next came fight classes.


	8. Chapter 8

8.

We were out on the karate mats, and Tatsuki beat me down as usual, and as usual I started crying. Tatsuki sighed, rolled her eyes, and went to walk away -

But, still sniffling, I scrambled to my feet. "No, p-please," I stammered. "I want to try again."

Tatsuki turned back to look at me in surprise. "You… want me to beat you again?"

"I want to fight you again," I repeated in a trembling voice.

So we did, and she beat me down a second time. Then a third time. I always cried, but I was determined. Through my tears, I asked to go again.

"Why are you trying so hard when you're always defeated?" Tatsuki asked wonderingly.

"Because - because I want to become a strong fighter!" I forced out, emotional.

Tatsuki paused, and then graced me with her first smile. It was a small one, and it grew only slowly on her face, it was almost a smirk, but it was warm with respect. "Okay," she said. "That? I can get behind."

Tatsuki went to stand next to me.

"You're doing it wrong," she said bossily. "See, your stance is like this, and then you swing in like this."

I stared from where I'd fallen to the mat. "You're… helping me?"

"Don't make me regret it!" Tatsuki snapped, and she looked distinctly embarrassed.

"O - Okay!" I scrambled to my feet once more, and copied her; she walked me through several stances and moves.

Tatsuki called us "allies" at first. But we began hanging out outside school. One day while we were sitting at a park bench with some ice cream - one of my first real play dates, a beautiful, sunny day - she asked me, "Hey, Ichigo… you know all the rumors? People say you can see ghosts."

I froze. She'd said that one because it was one of the politer ones, I knew, but the accuracy of the accusation hit me to the core. "... Yeah?" I said. "What about it?"

"Is it true? Any of it?" She looked at me boldly.

I laughed. "No," I lied, shaking my head. "It's just people being silly."

Tatsuki looked at me hard for a moment - then she nodded and went back to her ice cream. But the next day, when two girls were whispering at me as I passed in the school hallway, Tatsuki walked up to one of the girls and shoved her to the ground.

"You mess with my friend?! You mess with my friend?!" she shouting, losing it. "I will fuck you up!"

I was not the only one in the hallway who was gaping. Tatsuki walked up to me, matter of fact. "Come on, Ichigo," she said, grabbing my arm. "They're totally beneath you." She tossed her head and walked off with me. I paused, and smiled warmly.

Soon, it became widely known around school: Anyone who picked on Kurosaki Ichigo had the crap beaten out of them by Arisawa Tatsuki. Literally, in some cases.

After that, Tatsuki was my friend. We began hanging out together often, and I discovered she had a mischievous and raucous sense of humor, laughing with surprising regularity. She had a love for apple pie and tomboyish clothes, and was a total extrovert. She also wasn't bothered when I took my little sisters along for playdates, and Karin soon idolized her as "a cool girl."

Tatsuki was a warm, welcoming friend. I played with her and her guy friends on the playground, sat with them at school and ate lunch with them. People were too afraid to pick on me anymore, and I didn't have many dead-seeing accidents by that point anyway. My hair color somehow became less important to the people who knew me, really knew me, at school.

Not only was Tatsuki helping me with karate, but Mizuho was reluctantly impressed by my renewed tearful determination as well. "I'll give you this, Ichigo," she said, "you've got guts and spirit." She called me by my given name now, not my surname. I worked countless hours on the mat after classes, and she stood with me, correcting me if I did something wrong (which I did a lot).

She invited me over to the apartment she shared with her younger brother Keigo sometimes. Keigo was my age, with messy brown hair and a wide grin, and he was almost as much of a spazz as my father. He tried greeting me with a loud, shouting hug and then groping me the first time we met - because he wanted to get "in with a girl" - and Mizuho dragged him away and slapped him over the back of the head, yelling.

I reminded myself never to let Keigo and my father meet. Still, despite his clownishness, he was a good friend, and after that to my amazement I had three whole friends, and enjoyable school and fight classes, when once I hadn't had any of those things.

My life was improving. I was still a crybaby wimp, my heart on my sleeve and my earnestness fiery, but I was improving. Even in mothering, chores had become more manageable.

By the time I was nine, life was looking up. I still ran to my mother after every fight class and school day, beaming now, but I didn't need her comfort as much as I used to. Even my father seemed genuinely proud of me, and I distinctly heard him bragging loudly about me to his patients quite a few times.

I was happy.


	9. Chapter 9

9.

I have sat here for quite a while, wondering how to start relaying one of the most defining moments of my life. That's not meant to be cheesy, it's not an exaggeration. Without this one event, I would not have grown up to be the person I became. And the event looms so large in my mind, as such an ever reaching and infinite thing, that it's taken me awhile to figure out where to begin. In my mind… it just always happened. Everything that came after it was effect, everything that came before it was a march toward the inevitable.

But maybe it was just an event. Maybe it did have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It's strange to think of it that way, but perhaps that's the truth of it. So I'm just going to relay the story to you as it appeared to my mind at the time.

It was a summer day. June 17th. I was nine years old. It was raining - raining heavily. I'm not saying that to set the atmosphere; it becomes important later.

My Mom was walking me home from karate class, asking me about Mizuho and Tatsuki, about Keigo. She took a genuine interest in my new friends and loved teasing me about them.

"Sleepover sounds fun! Tatsuki, Mizuho, and all their girlfriends?"

"Yeah." I made a face. "But Tatsuki doesn't have any girlfriends, and all Mizuho's friends are older like her. I'm a little nervous."

"The great Kurosaki Ichigo! Nervous?" She beamed. "I'm sure you'll do fine."

Reluctantly, I smiled back.

"So what about Keigo?" she asked slyly. "Anything going on there?"

I made a face. "Ew, no, Mom. That's gross."

She laughed. "You think it's gross now…"

I made a face and squealed, and she laughed harder. "I'm not dating anyone who tried to grope me at our first meeting," I said flatly.

"Ah, good," she said, with solemnity but perhaps a little humor. "So you have standards."

Suddenly, a truck zoomed by and splashed us - well, me. I was holding her hand, walking closest to the road; she had an umbrella over her head and I was wearing a yellow rain jacket.

"Oh, what a mean truck!" she cooed, pulling me off to the side and wiping my face with her handkerchief. I ducked my head away from the handkerchief that smelled of her lavender perfume, embarrassed; she frowned a little. I still remember that. "Here," she said matter of factly, standing, "I'll walk by the side of the road so you don't get wet."

"But Mommy, I'm in a rain jacket and you're not. I'll walk by the side of the road." I looked up at her seriously from underneath the plastic yellow hood. "You're one of the people I want to protect. I want to be strong like you."

"Well, don't I feel flattered, and so much safer." Then she swatted my face playfully with the handkerchief. "But how many fighting matches have you won…?"

I sighed gustily in the silence.

"How many?" she said slowly, smirking.

"None," I muttered. "Yet!" I looked up, glaring firmly.

"That's right. Yet," she agreed calmly. "So until that happens, I think I'll be the one walking closest to the cars, if it's all the same to you."

So we changed positions, still holding hands, and were walking back toward home. "Your father is going to be so pleased when we get back," my mother was chattering cheerfully. "Tonight I was thinking of making -"

But I'd looked over. Across the street full of cars, past the sidewalk on the other side of the street, there was a little gully with a river in it, and since it had been raining so hard for several days, the river was overflowing. That's all I really remember about that day: a confusing mix of grey sheets of rain and a lavender scented old fashioned handkerchief.

But I saw a girl, standing by the river. She had short dark hair, very white skin, and a severe turn to her mouth. She was just standing, staring calmly into the water, by the bank of the river, waiting to drown like some unbreakable pillar oblivious to the oncoming waves.

I gasped. "Mommy, she's going to drown, she's trying to die!" I cried, and I ran for that helpless girl - across a street full of zooming cars. I just broke away from my mother, and ran, without thinking - reckless and emotional, heart on my sleeve and foolishly idealistic, as I had always been.

I don't know what I thought I was going to do. Pull her back, perhaps? Stop her from committing suicide, from drowning? I don't know what I thought I could do. I just wanted to help.

There was a chaos of a few seconds - flashing lights and honking horns and screeching halts, splashes of water - my mother calling after me in fear, "Ichigo, no, wait!" and then her footsteps running after me - I made it miraculously to the other side of the street, the sidewalk - I was almost to the girl, I reached out my hand -

Then something heavy knocked into me from behind and landed on top of me. I hit my head against the muddy ground next to the sidewalk and blacked out.

I pause the story there. Because that is the catalyst. That is the moment when everything changed.

* * *

I woke first to the sound of stunned, horrified voices.

"Look at all that blood coming from her back…"

"I think I hit her…"

At first I thought I was dead. That was my first thought: I'm dead. Then I blinked my eyes open, and realized that my face was in the mud and there was something heavy on top of me, covering me completely from behind. Also, I didn't feel any pain. That was surprising. Perhaps I really was dead. But what was all this warm, sticky stuff…?

With effort, I turned around, and found myself staring into my mother's dead face.

Her face was icy cold and completely white, turning blue. There was a sort of blank slackness to her expression. Her eyes were staring directly at me, as if I was the last thing she saw. And her face was frozen into a sort of terrifying smile. There was blood all around us, covering everything, and I was sinking into the muck and mire and mud beneath her.

In retrospect, maybe that should have been sweet. As she was dying, covering my protectively from the perceived threat, she looked at the side of my living face framed in the mud and smiled. It should have been touching.

It was horrifying.

I think I must have screamed, because a loud, piercing, gut-wrenching screaming-shrieking sound filled the air. Then I struggled, struggled, tearing against my dead mother's flesh, struggling to get out from underneath her. That screeching was still in the air. At last, I pushed out from under her and stood, covered in mud and blood that was not my own, clutching at myself; she flopped over uselessly and smiled blankly at the sky. That shrieking scream was still in the air. I think it was mine. I was numb.

I don't know how long I stood there and screamed. I know I didn't cry - I just screamed. I was broken down to the most essential elements of who I was. I had no words. All I could do was scream, like an infant.

Because the girl was gone from the riverbank, you see. She'd been dead, all along.

Then there were flashing red lights and paramedics were pulling me away from the scene, toward a white van. I remember horrified staring faces, flashes of whispers - "Oh my God, her child was underneath her -" "She was protecting her -" - but mostly I remember struggling. I didn't want to be taken away from this scene, from this moment, from what I had done. I didn't want to go into the white van with red flashing lights.

"No - NO - Mom - MOM - Mom, I'm sorry - I'M SORRY - No - MOM!" I reached a hand out for her, struggling, tears finally filling my eyes and my voice belatedly, and they pulled me away. I was yanked into the van and the doors slammed shut on my mother's prone, empty form lying in a pool of her own blood on the riverbank. Her eyes on the rainy grey skies.

I landed on the hospital bed in the paramedic van, and I was still shrieking, struggling. Three grown men held me down, didn't do anything but hold me down by the arms and legs, until my screams finally faded out into hoarse silence and I relaxed into exhaustion and then I just lay there, staring at the ceiling as they examined me for injuries, feeling as empty as a pitcher of water with all the water poured out, as a fire turned to ashes, and a lot of other poetic metaphors that seemed impossible when faced with the enormity of reality.


	10. Chapter 10

10.

I don't remember much from the subsequent days. Nothing physical, I mean, nothing concrete. I have a flash of memory: my father arriving at the hospital to pick me up and take me home. He wasn't crying or even openly grieving, but he was silent and unanimated and he just looked so very tired.

That was almost worse.

I remember another flash: going home and finding Yuzu and Karin crying. Going up to my room, lying on my bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. The house was still and silent. So strange, that by all appearances it remained unchanged.

I remember the funeral. The closed casket, the Buddhist priest chanting sutras, laying flowers with my mother, watching her casket be taken away in a hearse to the crematorium. The smell of incense everywhere. Karin had stopped crying, and indeed it seemed she would never cry again as she looked after the hearse; Yuzu was an emotional wreck. Dad was still tired.

I remember we had to pick the bones out of the ashes with chopsticks in a Japanese ritual after she was cremated. We were picking out bones, and I thought of these burnt white bones and ashes once being inside my mother; I ran outside and threw up all over the ground.

I remember the first time we visited her grave site, her urn placed beneath the place for offerings of flowers, food, and incense, the great pillar carrying her name.

I don't remember friends, or activities, or much of what I did during that time or in between those flashes of memory. I only remember how I felt: a keen sense of loss, but also guilt. The knowledge that I had killed my mother weighed heavily on my conscience, and what was worse was that no one seemed to care.

I almost wanted to scream at them, shake them. Demand that they be angry with me. I was the reason she was dead! They should be furious! But no one got angry. Not once.

Instead, my father secluded himself into his office and his work, only emerging to talk faithfully every day to the memorial of Mom he put up on the family room wall. Karin started getting into fights at their new school. Yuzu had sunk into a kind of morose depression, with reports of crying often in class, reports I read because Dad wouldn't.

I had taken them from her. Their sun, the thing that they all orbited around, that I had as well. The steady rock, the voice of reason. I had stolen her from all of us.

I was reminded, once more, of the distance between myself and my mother. I could not be her, not even when I tried. I could never be her. That good, that solid, that whole. I'd tried to save someone, and how had that ended up? My mother had died.

I was useless. Hopeless. And I had nightmares every night of waking up by the riverbank to her dead face again.

But then I remembered… I could see ghosts. Maybe I wasn't useless, I thought! Hope filled me. Surely… if there were any way to consciously stay behind, surely my mother would have. For us. It took ghosts a few days to appear…

She would be at the riverbank!

I walked myself to school now. So I pretended to my father that I was going to school. Then I went with my backpack to the riverbank and paced up and down there all day, waiting for my mother to appear. Every flash of light, every shadow, I whirled around in hope and delight -

But there was nothing there. No mother. Only light and shadow.

For days I did this. Pacing silently up and down the riverbank. Squatting when my legs got tired, and then pacing again.

I could do this, I thought. I could bring the ghost of my mother back home to my family. I could atone.

But days passed, and I never saw her. She never appeared at the house. Nothing.

Finally, on the seventh day, I thought I heard a voice and I whirled around in delight. No Mom. No one. I was alone in the sunset by the river.

And I realized, then, that she wasn't going to show. She wasn't there. And I wasn't angry with her - I was angry with the universe, with God, with whatever sentient being controlled the flow of life and death.

Because I realized the universe wasn't fair. It was going to taunt me with images of seeing the ghosts of everybody on the face of the goddamn planet except for the one person I really wanted. No one was there to save me. No one was going to bring her back to me. Nobody was going to make it in time.

I was alone.

And I screamed. I took off my backpack, I tore it off my back, I threw it away from myself, I ripped up paper, little bits of white went everywhere. And I screamed at the skies, to whatever universe controller could or could not hear me, "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!" Genuine despise filled my heart, disgust taking over my face.

And then I was standing there, surrounded by little bits of paper, breathing hard in the ringing silence.

It was up to me, I realized. Up to me to protect what family I had left. Never again would I rely on someone else to save me or the people I cared about.

"Well fine then…" I hissed, my eyes narrowed. I grabbed all the papers, stuffed them back in my backpack, swung the pack back over my shoulders, and set off again. "If you want something done right," I muttered as I walked away, "you've got to do it yourself."

I would get strong. I would protect my friends and family.

The emotions and ideals I'd had were dead. Gone. In their place was someone who rarely smiled and was scathing at the idea of anything being fair.

That's when my memory clears up again.


	11. Chapter 11

11.

Finally, I went back to school, karate, and kendo. I walked back out onto that karate mat determined, and got into a stance across from Tatsuki, my face calm and deadly.

She grinned. "Hey, Ichigo. Ready to get beat -?"

"Start the match."

Tatsuki was caught off guard. "What?"

"Start. The match." My eyes narrowed.

She seemed mildly offended. "Fine, if you're so ready to get the crap kicked out of you." She grinned and got into a stance across from me. "We'll start."

She flew in toward me, punched through my guard - and I fell over. Right then would usually be the moment when I would start crying. She stood, waiting…

Slowly, silently, I stood up. I looked up, my face deadly. "We're going again," I said quietly.

Tatsuki looked thrown off kilter and a little afraid. "Uh… okay," she said in a small voice. And so we did.

In kendo, I performed even better. Mizuho put me against one of the newbies in a spar, and I knocked the sword out of his hand in two quick moves. Mizuho should have been impressed, but instead she watched my cold expression, a frown forming over her face.

For a while, I think I became a bit of a zombie. I threw myself, furiously, zealously, and silently, into mastering karate and kendo. I moved quickly up through the belts and ranks, shocking everyone with my sudden fervor and unwavering determination to become the best. I got back up quickly after every fall, but after a while not many people could fell me anymore.

I have only vague memories of my family at that time. I told myself I was doing this for them, but I certainly didn't pay them much attention. Deep down I think I was just angry, and grieving.

I also became distant, spurning all my former friends. I wasn't good company; I didn't have much to say. Words were useless; there was only my unwavering determination to master fighting. What would that get me? Deep down, I had no idea. I just didn't want to see anyone else around me die, and becoming better at fighting, more emotionally controlled, was the only way I knew of to make that happen.

I forced myself into a point of steel, until it seemed there was no softness left.

It all happened in one week. Tatsuki and Mizuho were both fighting masters by that point; I downed one in one spar, one in the other. I stood above them, cool and steady, as they stared up at me in disbelief from the mat. I had defeated them. It had been barely a year.

I made the level of mastery, my black belt, my goal, and I stopped going to karate and kendo classes. I drifted off. It seemed there was no longer any point.

* * *

One day at school, some kid finally pushed the wrong button.

"Hey, look, I'm Kurosaki," he mocked, mimicking a zombie shuffle before class, arms out before himself, and everyone chuckled. Tatsuki looked between me and the guy in clear panic, but I continued eating quietly, making no move to shout or intervene.

I still didn't have many emotions. It was like they'd been burned out of me.

"I bet she's still just all fucked up about her Mom -" he sneered, and rage grew over Tatsuki's face, but before she could do anything I'd whirled around in a spurt of speed and cold cocked the kid right across the face. He fell to the ground with a thump.

Rage suddenly filling me, my face twisted, and I knelt down over him, punched and punched, blood flew. Tatsuki was shouting in the background. I eventually had to be pulled away from the kid by a panicked teacher, and sent to the principal's office.

I remember that incident, because all of a sudden it was like all my rage and bitterness had spun to the forefront, leaving me cold and hot all at the same time. I walked around ready to beat the shit out of someone for days, memories spinning through my head. I also remember that shortly after that is the first time I met Orihime - already triggered.

Safe to say, it was not a fortuitous first meeting.


	12. Chapter 12

12.

The doorbell rang that morning before the hospital had opened. I was in my school uniform, getting ready for school. I ran to the front door and opened it.

A girl about my age with beautiful but painfully short caramel-colored hair was standing there, a dying, blood-soaked man in a business suit on her back. I saw a trail of blood behind them - she'd dragged him all the way here.

"Please…" she gasped. "Please… my brother Sora… he's been hit by a car…"

"Dad!" I yelled, running into the depths of the house for him. "Dad, someone's dying out here!"

Dad run into the front entryway, and swore. "Get him inside!" he snapped. "I'll take him!"

My Dad got Sora onto a hospital bed, hooked him up to machines, tried to fix as much as he could. Then, as the heart rate monitor went haywire, my father ran into his office. I knew what that meant.

He was going to try calling Karakura City. Sora needed major surgery to survive - he needed to be cut open and physically healed by hand by surgeons.

I held up a clipboard, trying matter of factly to get the distracted, crying, distraught girl's information. "Excuse me," I said, trying to distract her from the bleeping heart rate monitor and the shouting down the hall. She turned back to me, confused. "Focus," I said. "Your name?"

"Inoue Orihime," she said tearfully.

"Who can we call for you?"

"No one… no one… it's just me and my brother…" And here she started sobbing again. I looked at her pityingly.

Just then, the heart rate flatlined. She looked up and gasped. My Dad ran swearing into the hospital room, just as the blaring of paramedic sirens sounded outside the hospital. Somehow, miraculously, Karakura City had sent help - the presence of the little girl could have had something to do with that.

I watched the crying girl run after the paramedics who were wheeling her dead brother into the van. "Onii-chan! Onii-chan! Please don't leave me alone!" she screamed in tears, running after him.

Please don't leave me alone.

No. No. Blood. Screaming. Fuck.

I stumbled into the back of our house, horrible, vicious images tumbling through my mind. My mother's dead face. The smell and feel of mud and blood. Sheets of grey rain. A lavender handkerchief. Being yanked screaming into a white van. The ghost girl being swallowed by the river.

I curled up in the hospital bathroom, kicking and screaming, crying my eyes out. I couldn't stay here. I had to leave. I had to leave.

I stood shakily, dizzy. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stumbled my way past my sisters, who cried and ran for me. I ran blindly out the back door, shutting it behind me, their cries falling away as I ran somewhere - anywhere - else.

* * *

I was homeless on the streets in the darker parts of Tokyo for a period of a few months. I didn't go home once.

I drifted off, wandering the streets, carrying my knife, unsteady and unstable. I saw my reflection in puddles in shop mirrors. I'd grown tall and thin, very thin, pale, with long, shaggy, unkempt hair and dead eyes.

I slept behind garbage cans, stole food, but usually didn't eat much. I considered suicide occasionally, idly, the way one might the weather. I got into fights sometimes - almost always because of my "Yankee" female gang girl hair color, and sometimes in a sexual way. Especially with my knife? I never lost a fight. I became vicious and sarcastic in addition to being cold.

After the first few fights, my anger drained out of me, and then that was all that was left of me. Viciousness, sarcasm, and cold.

I would beat the shit out of whole gangs of men, slamming a particularly sexually aggressive man up against a wall, putting my huge-ass knife to his throat. "You want to mess with me, you fuckwad?" I growled. "Huh?!"

I got a reputation even around the streets for being "crazy" - a "nutcase."

The worst part, though, was the way ordinary people looked at me. Either they would glare at me in cold fear, even ordering me away from them, or they would avoid my eyes entirely. It made me feel like an alien. Absurdly, the worst part was feeling alone.

People texted me a lot at first, demanding to know where I was, and then begging me to help them find me. Tatsuki, Mizuho, and Keigo were obviously especially distraught, in retrospect. Even my father tried contacting me. I hid from all passing policemen. I answered no phone calls. I didn't want to be found. After a while, my phone ran out of battery and the texts and calls stopped.

For some reason, one moment comes to mind. I was sitting in a back alley, leaning up against a wall, knife in one hand, staring with a distant kind of interest at the dead cell phone in the other hand. I looked up - and saw a ghost standing there.

The grin that stretched across my thin face was alien and maybe a little hysterical. I knew how I looked - dirty and bloody, long unkempt hair. "Hey," I said. "How you doin?" I laughed because I didn't know what else to do.

The ghost of the man, kind of a stick in the mud with really tight pulled-up pants and a button-up shirt, stared around himself for the human I must be talking to. "Are you crazy, young girl?" he asked.

Maybe I could just relate to him. I felt like a ghost.

"I don't know," I said quietly. "Maybe I am." I smiled again. What else was there to say?

The ironic part? I'd gotten what I always wanted. I was a master of fighting, and by now I could see all ghosts perfectly. When I finally didn't care whether or not I made a mistake - that was when I stopped making mistakes.

There was something philosophical in that, but I was too tired to figure out what it was.

* * *

Eventually it all came to a head. I went without eating for too many days. I realized this was when the world started spinning - and then I woke up to find my face had eaten concrete.

I lay there for a while, pondering life, the universe, and everything. Maybe I should go back. Part of me balked against the idea… but why?

I realized I'd forgotten why I left. Some catharsis had come into play, some spell of dark fury and grief had been lifted from me, somewhere along the way, while I wasn't looking.

Maybe all this was just what I'd needed to do all along. I got the feeling Mom would have understood that - if she wasn't too angry with me, that was.

I put those days behind me, in a moment of great realization. They were in the past.

Slowly, I stood up, and started for home. It was strange - still standing after all this time. I walked through the front door, like a patient - I felt a bit like a patient.

My family gasped and called my name and gathered in the front entry - and they just stared at me. Like I was a stranger.

They didn't know me. I didn't know myself. I was broken, defeated, and I didn't know who I was anymore. I was back home, and just maybe healing.

The question became… Between my fucked up self and my fucked up family, what did I, what did we, do now? Were things too ruined to be fixed?


	13. Chapter 13

13.

The physical recovery was hard.

I had to eat until I was uncomfortably full every day, sleep a lot, shower about twice a day, and even a little bit of exercise for a while left me breathless. I was horrified. What had I done to myself? In working out and fighting, I used to be a well oiled machine!

So I exercised every day and practiced karate and kendo katas and moves until I felt I was back to my former splendor. It was a long improvement process, but I got there in the end. Some good even came out of it - I ended up with a love of tea, health food, and jogging. Every morning, for example, I got up early and went for a run, then came back and made sweet natto, fruit, and green tea for breakfast.

Yes, I started cooking, cleaning, and helping my father with nursing. I decided to fill my mother's role and become a mother figure - it was badly needed. I supposed that despite my guilt, I was still trying to become my mother, but after all someone had to look after my father and sisters.

So I decided: my father would have an assistant even if the silence between us was uncomfortable, the house wouldn't look like a trash heap anymore, and there would be no more empty takeout containers after dinner. I would cook meals myself.

I had lots of foundling struggles with that. Cleaning the toilet bowl was disgusting, and in my first show of old emotion, I began yelling at my father for constantly leaving the toilet seat up and the newspapers crumpled beside the toilet. My first few meals came out badly burnt and as I teared up, my family ate them and pretended they were good to be polite. And it took me awhile to learn a calm, even gentle bedside manner when it came to nursing. My sisters didn't always let me advise them and bandage their cuts and bruises at first.

But slowly, I grew in mothering abilities, and they even became a point of pride for me. I came to enjoy cooking and baking - I learned I loved spicier meals, and delicious homemade chocolate desserts. Creating meals was a quiet kind of joy, an art. I was what I had promised myself I would be - both a strong fighter, and a nurturing though fiery and scolding mother.

Strangely, it was my mother's advice that comforted me most. This was just another fight, and I couldn't afford to give up.

It wasn't always all that easy. My father was still distant, my sisters still dysfunctional - Yuzu overly emotional and Karin silent and angry. Yuzu got upset every time I left the house to get groceries, Karin yelled at me a lot, and my father could barely look me in the eye on the best of days. Of course, I was still dealing with my own memories, too, and trying to be a mother on top of that.

For the first time, I had the conscious wish that I had died instead of my mother. It would have been easier, I felt, for my family to lose me. That was the first time it ever registered for me that the lives of the people I loved were far important than my own.

I had a breakthrough with each of them. With my sisters, one day, I just bluntly apologized.

"I'm sorry," I said, as they looked up at me in surprise. "You left when I needed me, and I'm sorry." I knelt down to look them in the eye. "But I promise, I'll never abandon you again. I'm not going to leave you alone. Okay? And I'm really trying. You have to try, too."

Yuzu teared up and gave a hug. Karin paused for a moment - then moved forward and gave me a quick, hard, fierce hug too.

"It's okay, Onee-chan," said Yuzu emotionally, still clinging to me. "I forgive you."

"... What you did was shitty. But I guess we all had our own stuff to deal with," Karin forced out after a moment, standing backward, and I could tell this was a difficult admittance for her. Forgiveness did not come naturally to Karin, the way it did for Yuzu.

"Thank you," I said quietly, looking at her meaningfully.

Things came easier after that. I counseled them quietly through their feelings, bandaged their bruises and made meals for them, talked them through seeing dead spirits. Slowly, with that kind of presence, they became less dysfunctional. Yuzu started a doll collection and made her own crafts and dresses, and stopped crying in the middle of class. Karin took to kickball with the boys instead of fist fights.

They even began becoming my little helpers, in things like cooking and nursing.

With my father, a somewhat different tack was needed.

"You know, Dad," I told him while we were clearing up the hospital after hours one night, "you're a gigantic dork, but I'm not upset with you for being so distant. If that's what you're worried about."

He turned to stare at me, as I quietly continued cleaning up.

I turned to look at him, and made a gusty sigh. "Look," I said reluctantly, crossing my arms, looking away, and blushing, "I - I miss my Dad, okay?"

Dad's eyes widened - and then he charged at me, goofy and dramatic, his arms wide open. I swatted him away. "Oi!" I said, annoyed. "I don't miss you that much!"

He continued trying to hug me, and I yelped and began pulling away in alarm.

I took my mother's advice - that allowing Dad to goof around with us gave him life. Me and my father formed a sort of rapport - he would act like a spazz, I would act annoyed with him, but deep down we knew we were both just teasing. He became more normal with Karin and Yuzu, too, teasing and smothering them with affection despite their shared irritation.

And after that, it was almost like we were a family again. It was tentative at first, but we made real progress. The memorial of Mom remained, but we became a family despite her absence. We even started a tradition of having a picnic at her grave every year - even though we knew she'd passed on - feeling healed enough to recognize her memory.

I felt an upwelling of love and protection and fire toward my remaining family, strong and unbreakable, and toward my friends. I may not be much of a hero, I thought, remembering the day at the riverbank, but I'd be damned if anyone I loved was going to get killed again. If somebody wanted to hurt one of my family members or friends, they'd have to do it over my cold, dead body.

I was still sharp, vicious at times, sarcastic, and I didn't openly emote very much, but my love and care, my stability, my fiery resolve returned. (So did my temper. That never went away.)

I tried to reconnect with old friends, and to my surprise I succeeded.

"Thank God you're back, I was getting annoyed," said Mizuho flatly, when I called her uncertainly that first time over the phone. I smiled warmly.

"If you need a shoulder to cry on, I'm here!" Keigo yelled in the background.

"Shut up, Keigo," I said, but there was still a smile in my voice.

I met Tatsuki in person. "I'm just glad you're okay," she said, shrugging. "I figured, you were doing what you needed to do. I was mostly just worried about you."

I was thankful for the generosity of my friends. They were added firmly to my circle of protected people.

The dynamics had changed. Keigo only half jokingly called the new me "terrifying," while Mizuho treated me on a more equal footing and Tatsuki stopped taking her protective stance toward me. "I don't really need to anymore," she admitted, shrugging. "You can defend yourself."

So to my eternal surprise, I became Tatsuki's equal as well. We became the frightening, fierce, hard twins at school, the people nobody fucked with and half the population skirted around, stalking the halls together. We picked no fights, but we never backed down from one and always ended all of them.

At school, I got back into grades. The "Yankee" girl gang rumors stuck, because of my grown state and hair color, so I got spotless grades and kept a tight, almost cold control over myself to prove people wrong about me. I cut my own hair to avoid clucking, disapproving hairdressers.

Perhaps most importantly, slowly I learned to have fun. I learned to laugh again. I developed a warm, teasing, infectious sense of humor, so I was a strange combination of vicious, protective, fiery, grinning, and fun-loving. Tatsuki and I loved joking around with each other, and I found a surprising freedom in grins, smirks, teasing, dry quips, laughter.

I was still a little uncertain of myself, but I progressed pretty far over a short period of time.

My friends made it their mission in life to help me find fun things to do with my time. "You can't be so serious all the time, it's not good," Tatsuki said.

I found I loved books. Pretty soon, my bedroom was a collection of hundreds of big, dog-eared, marked old books, especially classical literature, poetry, and plays. Inspired, I took some writing classes and began writing novice poetry myself, sometimes even mimicking old school language and writing poems of increasing complexity.

I also discovered I loved punk rock music, horror movies, manga and comics, and video games. I wanted to get more into music, but wasn't sure quite how yet. In any case, I shared my hobbies with many of my friends, so after that we had things we could do together, in addition to the fun I had alone.

I discovered my online presence and aesthetic. It was a sort of dark, deep, poetic affair, serious and thoughtful, with some occasional sparks of quirky or dry humor to liven things up.

So by the time I was eleven or twelve and I'd hit puberty, though I was still inwardly uncertain of myself, I'd come far - very far.


	14. Chapter 14

14.

I walked into the bathroom one morning, looked down at my underwear, and saw blood. I resisted the urge to scream. At least I lived above a hospital.

"Dad?!" I called, faux calm, and something about my tone had him rushing into the bathroom. He stopped and stared. "I think I'm dying," I said, my face very pale.

Instead of looking as properly alarmed as he should have been, he seemed embarrassed and sheepish. "You, uh - you're not dying," he said. "It means you're becoming a woman."

"Women - bleed - there?" I asked disbelievingly.

"Yeah. Once a month till they're in their forties and fifties."

"What."

"And if you stop bleeding altogether, that means you're probably pregnant."

"WHAT?!"

My Dad taught me the mechanics about how to deal with a period - fairly calmly and clinically; he was a doctor. But he seemed embarrassed and was unwilling to reveal anything more about what this mysterious "puberty" thing meant.

I was troubled. I'd noticed my body had started to change, too. It had begun to grow curves, like older girls had, but I was self conscious because they weren't as big as the changes of most of the girls I knew. I'd taken to wearing baggy, boyish clothes to hide my body. I had the feeling I didn't know about all this - because I didn't have my Mom.

Deciding I had no other choice, I called Tatsuki and Mizuho and told them my problem. "I - I need help," I admitted, embarrassed.

And they were immediately at my call.

"Girl," said Mizuho, "we have got you covered."

"Everyone meet at my place," said Tatsuki, determined. "Girls only. I'm enlisting my Mom's help."

So Tatsuki, Mizuho, and Mrs Arisawa all sat me down on Tatsuki's couch, and gave me a very - long - talk. We covered female reproductive health, sex, shaving, menstruation, and changing bodies all in one go. Mrs Arisawa was firm, matter of fact, and clinical, and Mizuho also treated the issue very seriously, though Tatsuki teased me some in an effort lighten the mood.

"Your body is fine," Mrs Arisawa said.

"But my curves are tiny. I look like a rectangular cardboard box," I said flatly, blushing. "I look like a boy."

"Nonsense," said Mrs Arisawa, frowning with dignity. "You focus on all the negatives and none of the positives. You're tall, slim, long legged, and elegant. You have a nice warm autumn coloring. Plenty of good things."

"Besides, some people like smaller curves," said Tatsuki. "They like the whole perky thing. Also? You've got a great ass."

"Your hair could be an advantage, too, if you cut it right," said Mizuho. I stared at her. She shrugged. "You've got the messy bedhead look," she said. "Everyone has advantages to their appearance. It's all about what you do with them."

So the three of them took me shopping and got me all sorted out. Yeah, they bought me period stuff, cotton underwear, and sports bras, but they also introduced my long shaggy hair to a new haircut, and introduced me to clothing fashion, jewelry, makeup, and perfume.

They cut my long pumpkin colored hair into a layered look that framed my heart shaped face, complete with sweeping side bangs to cover my forehead. I decided I liked updos better, so I usually wore my hair in either a bun or a hair clip slightly higher than the middle of my head. I learned over time to master the "attractively messy" look when it came to my hair.

They also taught me how to pluck and arch my thin, expressive eyebrows, and how to hold my face like I was always on the verge of smiling, but hadn't quite done it yet. Mrs Arisawa gave me a lesson in walking tall, straight, graceful, and proud - just short of strutting.

My makeup was tailored to my autumn complexion - I found warm red lipsticks and fancy brown eyeliner designs made me feel fabulous; the eyeliner brought out the brown in my eyes, and the right blush and foundation brought out the gold in my skin. I discovered I loved dangling earrings when it came to jewelry, the best for a heart shaped face being either inverted triangle and teardrop shaped, or small hoops and dangles. Yellow gold, especially with accent jewels, looked great on me. My perfume was always a warm autumn scent, my favorite being spiced apple cider (which was on the spicier, darker, almost peppery side of autumn).

"The way to a man's heart is through his stomach," said the stoical, matter of fact Mrs Arisawa. "If he associates you with yummy food, you're golden."

"Listen to my Mom," said Tatsuki brightly, as Mizuho helped me apply some perfume. "She's always right."

Then came clothes.

Apparently, the whole point of dressing a rectangle body shape was to create the illusion of curve, so I chose tops and sweaters that emphasized the slimness of my waist, plunging halter necklines, a long camel colored coat that belted at the waist, and tiny little empire dresses for my tops. I found I adored soft, flowy fabrics and materials that tightened around my body. A line skirts and knee length pencil skirts were my chosen bottoms, with leggings underneath them for winter, and my favorite summer shoes were a set of ballerina flats and a pair of pumps. Long, pointy-heeled dark boots also made me feel fabulous.

I found I loved leaf and other nature patterns, and my favorite clothing shades were coffee, chocolate, mahogany, bronze, teal, deep gold, olive green, orange, bittersweet red, apricot, rust, terra cotta, brown burgundy, and deep purple.

Aside from my sneakers and workout clothes for PE and morning runs, that became my whole new wardrobe.

I came home to my family that night, all dressed up, self conscious, the three women beaming around and behind me as if determined to get a good reaction. I was blushing, my head ducked, scowling.

My Dad's eyes widened in genuine surprise. "Wow," he breathed, forgetting for a moment to kid. "You look… great."

"Yeah, you look like a chick," said Karin in surprise, as Yuzu stood and began jumping up and down.

"Onee-chan, you look beautiful! Beautiful!" she exclaimed, and at last I smiled.

Over time, I gained my old arrogance back. I learned how to turn men down - yes, I did in fact have to learn that - and how to hold myself smugly, know my body, know and even tease about how much I had to offer. I was dangerous, but beautiful.

I came to like that dichotomy about myself.

I was just in time for my all-girls middle school.


	15. Chapter 15

15.

Tatsuki and I ended up going to the same all-girls middle school, with their dark uniforms and higher subjects. We dressed up amid our uniforms for the entrance ceremony, and could see my Dad cheerily dorkily in the ceremony audience, Mizuho smiling and winking beside him. Mizuho was already in high school; Keigo had gone to an all boys middle school and my sisters were by now in elementary school.

But Tatsuki and I ended up in the same class for all three years of our schooling in that big, block, multi-level building full of gossipy, judgmental, makeup applying girls that you had to undress beside in phys ed locker rooms, and thus became very close through mutual threat.

After the first few times we were laughed at or gossiped about, and the first few times we punched a girl across the face or kicked her in the ankle, we got a widespread reputation for being "crazy bitches." Proud of our title, and skeptical of all the other girls who thought they were so cool, we stuck together and got through junior high as one tough unit, a united front.

Junior high was like elementary school in some ways. We still sat in one classroom all day in our uniforms, me and Tatsuki beside each other, and our obentos were still provided by the school and brought to us in our classroom. We still helped clean up the school ourselves in shifts. But now we had different teachers for every subject, who rotated through our classroom in fifty minute periods, along with a homeroom teacher who doubled as a counselor. Recess was also, of course, gone.

Some of our subjects were old hat, other subjects entirely new. Junior high school subjects consisted of our native Japanese language, beginner's English (the language of culture and business), social studies, mathematics, science, music, the fine arts, the industrial arts, moral education, and phys ed or physical exercise.

Phys ed was easy for me after all my years of exercising, so I threw myself into mastering my intellectual studies, determined to bely my reputation with near perfect grades.

There were enormous opportunities for music at my junior high school. I saw that right away. When I saw a sign pinned up on the notice board advertising dancing and singing lessons as an extracurricular activity, my eyes lit up.

Here, I thought, was my opportunity to learn more about music.

So I started going to the on campus music studios after school. Tatsuki had gotten involved in competitive karate and karate club, continuing on with fight lessons after becoming a black belt, but I'd never been in it for the socialization and I didn't see the point in attending for something I'd already mastered and still practiced regularly.

It frustrated Tatsuki. "Ichigo, you're telling me that you can beat me and you're a master in two different styles of fighting, and you don't even want to lead a fight club?" she asked disbelievingly. "You'd be the perfect instructor!"

"I'm sticking it to the man," I said flatly. "I don't get off on being in a position of authority and I'm not into delusions of grandeur. Come on, Tatsuki, you know I don't have any interest in something like that. I'd rather learn something new."

Tatsuki simply sighed, frustrated. She and the others never did quite give up on trying to get me to join the school fight clubs. Mizuho, in our off time, was just as bad. I was so good, no one could see why I wasn't more interested.

But I only fighted when I had a reason to. What reason did I have to join a fight club at this point in my life? I'd fulfilled my genetic destiny, I'd mastered physical fighting, I'd become strong enough to protect my family and friends. That was all I was interested in.

No, what I wanted to do was music - singing and dancing, to be precise. For my three years of junior high, I took modern hip hop dance, partner swing dancing, and solo singing. Then I continued with those hobbies into high school.

How it worked was, I would change into something comfortable and easy to move around in: in my case, a pair of teal short shorts and a dark peach tank top. Then I would walk out into the studio - nervous the first few times - and dancing was rather like fighting. We'd copy the teacher's movements as a class, then try to do the movements on our own, sometimes in concert with a partner in the case of swing dancing. Eventually, we would put a bunch of different movements together into a dance and test out our skills to music on the studio floor. One great thing about guys who seriously take dance? They never try to grope you or treat your rudely. They're in it to improve, too, and unlike with fighting, they're not offended when you're better than them. It was kind of nice.

Singing was different. I'd stand individually with the teacher in her office and she'd play the piano, running through singing exercises with me, always encouraging me to sing louder and with better breath support. Then, eventually, we'd move on to practicing and memorizing my favorite songs.

The strangest, most unexpected thing I had to grapple with at first? Self consciousness. My voice was unconventional for a Japanese girl's, an alto, deep and raspy - not ugly, but handsome rather than cute or pretty. And that was not what was in vogue in Japan at the time at all. Additionally, dancing made me feel really stupid at first. And I found that the more awkward and stupid I felt, the more awkward and stupid looking I became. Dancing was also nothing like fighting, contrary to all popular metaphors; fighting was a series of staid, sharp movements while dancing was flowing and graceful.

"Look, Kurosaki," the school music teacher, a full little woman with a bulldog face - you wouldn't expect her to be graceful, but she was - finally told me in irritation. "Most of your problem is that you're self conscious, so you fall back on your fighting instincts or you make your voice uglier. Sing and dance like you're the most beautiful and talented person in the room, use the techniques I've taught you, and everything will work out a lot better."

Strangely? After I thought of myself as beautiful, graceful, and seductive, I became more so. My dancing grace filtered into my fighting, while my fighting precision filtered into my dancing. I even came to integrate dancing and singing together with a headset microphone. I started synchronizing with others and participating in school concerts.

Touchingly, even though I looked and sounded like a total dork at first, my family and friends were there cheering as loudly as possible to embarrass me at every recital. My father would enthusiastically organize what he called "Ichigo Concert Parties," and then he and Keigo would compete to see who could embarrass me loudest while Tatsuki, Mizuho, Mrs Arisawa, and my sisters watched in skeptical amusement.

Slowly, I looked and sounded better, I improved.

* * *

Author's Notes: For those wondering about Orihime? Next chapter. Chad comes a couple of chapters after that. Ichigo will also get into more aspects of music, but not for a little bit.


	16. Chapter 16

16.

It happened one day in middle school. Tatsuki and I were walking off campus at the end of the day, and Tatsuki stopped and pointed at something. "Whoa. Check that out."

I turned around, and my eyes widened.

The girl from that night at the hospital, Inoue Orihime, was curled up crying on the ground, wearing our school uniform. A bunch of bullies were standing around her, kicking her and cutting at her beautiful caramel colored hair with scissors, keeping it brutally short.

"That's fucked up," Tatsuki muttered, teeth gritting in anger.

"Tatsuki," I suddenly breathed, "we have to save her."

"Wha -?"

"Just trust me, come on!" And I ran forward.

Tatsuki sighed and said, "Okay, let's do this," and followed behind me.

We leaped on two girls from behind, knocking them to the ground. I took two and Tatsuki took two. I knocked the scissors out of one girl's hands with a kick - she cried out - and with deadly precision I punched her in the face, knocked the other girl under the chin, knocking their heads back. They fell backward on the ground.

I walked up over the girl I could guess from knowing her was behind it all, and put my foot to the girl's throat; she began making choking noises and my face twisted. "You don't touch this girl!" I snarled, pointing at Orihime. "Got it?!"

Her face turning blue and fearful, her throat bruising, she nodded quickly. I removed my foot.

I whirled around to find Tatsuki standing calmly, having downed the remaining two girls. Inoue Orihime was curled up on the ground, tears still in her eyes and hair half-cut, startled. I walked up to her.

"That's why your pretty hair's always so short, isn't it?" I said bluntly. She looked down in sadness and shame.

"Well you don't have to worry about that!" said Tatsuki brightly. "You can hang with us!"

"Yeah," I said confidently. "We can protect you." I held out my hand. "Alright… Orihime?"

She looked up at my smile, and then analyzed my face closer, searching. "You're the girl from the hospital," she realized, her eyes widening.

"Yeah. Sorry about your brother," I said sympathetically.

"Thanks. It's been a couple of years now. How are you?" she added politely, but she seemed genuinely concerned. That was how I knew she was a good person.

I smiled, a little bittersweetly, even as Tatsuki stared at us lost. "A lot better than the last time you saw me," I said.

She smiled as if she knew exactly what I meant, a similar pain in her own eyes. "Yeah," she said. "Me too."

"You live by yourself now?" I asked idly.

She nodded timidly. "I - I've been emancipated. I live in an apartment."

"My fiend Mizuho's been emancipated too. She lives with and raises her brother," I said.

"It sucks, though, to be by yourself," Tatsuki added sympathetically.

"Well you're not anymore," I said decisively, bossy. "We're your friends now. Got it?"

She smiled and took my hand, letting me pull her to her feet. "Okay," she said shyly. "M-my name's Inoue Orihime. Nice to meet you."

"Arisawa Tatsuki," said Tatsuki, sticking out her hand and grinning.

"Kurosaki Ichigo," I added, smirking.

And from there, we were a threesome.

No, really. We hit it off immediately. Orihime became more cheerful and extroverted under our protection, growing out her beautiful caramel colored hair over the following years alongside a rather impressive rack I secretly envied. She wore childish star hair barrettes in her hair - a gift, she said, from her late brother Sora.

I reflected that each of my best friends had an accessory that meant a lot to them. Tatsuki, dressed boyishly with short spiky hair to the end, had an orange wrist bracelet she really favored as well. I could never get it out of her why it meant so much to her.

Orihime was an interesting girl, in the best possible way. Kind, chattery, and daydreamy, she was surprisingly intelligent, unusually sensitive, an excellent artist, and an eccentric cook. She was all about healing, herbal remedies, drawing, and crafting. She loved long Asian and flower print skirts. She reminded me of a little child like ball of sunshine - she even still had her old favorite childhood teddy bear Enraku. She was also, due to her absent mindedness, extraordinarily clumsy. Protecting her quickly became a full-time job for both me and Tatsuki, not always due to threats from the outside.

"You trip over air!" Tatsuki would shout in frustration.

"Don't yell at me, it's not my fault," Orihime would mutter.

"Uh, yeah, actually it kind of is," I'd point out logically, and they'd both level me with a glare.

But though we fought, we had the best of times together. We went shopping, we went to the arcade, but our favorites were sleepovers at Orihime's apartment, where we'd bring snacks and paint our toenails with scented nail polish and sneak glasses of illegal wine. We'd sit around on our sleeping bags in the living room and just talk for hours.

That was when I first began seeing the ghost of Sora - Orihime's brother, the dark haired suited man, who still hung around, chain hanging, about Orihime's apartment. I waited until I was walking home from her place one night, then I looked up and called out to him from below, "Hey. Ghost Guy. Sora." My tone was flat, casual. He whirled around from where he'd been hanging, melancholy, around the open window to Orihime's apartment.

Then he floated down to me. "You can see me," he whispered in amazement.

"Yeah, it's part of the package. Look, man, you've got to pass on," I said. "Orihime's got her own life now, and you need a new one."

He looked away. "She asked me not to abandon her," he said quietly. "That day at the ambulance. And I'm not going to." He frowned stubbornly. "I'm going to protect her. Even if she forgets me."

"She hasn't forgotten you," I said calmly, my expression veiled. "And me and Tatsuki will protect her. You need to move on."

He just glared at me.

I shrugged and walked away, hands in the pockets of my long camel coat that belted at the waist and heeled boots clicking, dangling earrings swaying, perfume wafting after me. "Suit yourself," I called over my shoulder. "If it makes you feel better, keep hanging around. I'm here if you ever need to talk."

And I left, with him staring in bewilderment after me.

It seemed being impressed by me ran in the family.

"You're amazing, Ichigo," said Orihime once in quiet awe, after I'd fended off another attack from an unwanted suit obsessed with my supposedly rebellious and exotic hair color. "Fighting off all those strong men by yourself."

"Eh," I shrugged. "They're just annoying."

"Infuriating is what they are," Tatsuki muttered.

But, laughing and chatting, we continued our walk to middle school together.


	17. Chapter 17

17.

Orihime loved comedy shows. Japanese comedy was called owarai, and more specifically its most popular form was manzai, a pair of acting professionals messing around onstage, filled with slapstick, silly sound effects, and puns. It was sometimes ridiculous, but sometimes it got a good laugh out of me and it was just idle fun. Me, Tatsuki, and Orihime were lazed on Orihime's couch snacking, watching one of her favorite comedy shows. I looked over idly and saw the ghost of Sora smiling as he watched the television, perched on the window ledge behind us.

"I've been having trouble sleeping lately," I admitted idly, staring in a glazed sort of way at the television.

Orihime looked around and straightened. "You should try ASMR before bed!"

"What the hell is that?" I asked bluntly, blinking, wide mouth turning down into a puzzled frown.

"It's that thing people do where they whisper and make sounds into a microphone in a video," Tatsuki reminded me.

"I have never heard of this," I declared. "But Orihime, I swear, if this is another one of your hack medicinal remedies…" My tone was warming.

She stood, straightening and beaming, turning off the TV. "No, come on, it's great!" she said. "Just try it! It really helps you relax!"

I scrunched my little nose up, thinking. "Alright," I said at last. "But if this is stupid -"

"It's only stupid if you turn the sound off," said Tatsuki.

"That is not reassuring," I declared.

Orihime took her phone, scrolled to a video, plugged in the headphones, and gave them to me. "Here. Try it." She smiled. "I'll turn the lights off."

So, skeptical, I sat there in the dark and watched the video. ASMR did indeed, as it turned out, have a strange power over a person. It should have been ridiculous, but instead you shivered and got tingles up and down your spine as the person in the video went through different soothing whispers and sounds. Slowly, I relaxed into a state of brain-numbness, then my eyes slid shut, and I came to at the end of the video drooling on Orihime's couch in a blank sort of state of pleasantness.

"I feel like I just took a drug," I muttered, slurring, lying completely horizontal on the cushions.

Tatsuki shrugged and nodded. "Told you!" said Orihime triumphantly. "Eventually you're supposed to go into a state that's sort of like a meditative trance. The person talks you down into a place where you're not thinking of anything. It's very relaxing."

So I tried ASMR every night in bed for a while, phone clutched in my hand and headphones in. It was an instant antidote to insomnia. I would wake to find the phone still clutched in my hand and the wires all tangled, I fell asleep so quickly.

But soon, I wanted to interact with what I was watching. I had never been very good at being a passive viewer or listener. "Orihime," I said, calling her on the phone, a little embarrassed, "hey, uh… how do you make an ASMR video?"

She practically exploded and I pulled the phone away from my ear. She couldn't have squealed any louder if I'd just told her she'd won some magnificent inheritance of money.

So Tatsuki, Orihime, and even Mizuho helped me start my own ASMR channel. Yuzu and Karin were curious, too. I began with an iPhone, and eventually asked for more sophisticated equipment for birthdays and holidays. I always made sure to dress up very nicely for the videos - easy since I usually dressed up very nicely anyway.

I found the creation process was more satisfying and easier than I expected. I created a few main backdrops consisting of sheets or screens, and from there indulged mostly in what triggers I would find soothing and what I liked and didn't like. There wasn't much roleplay, but there were plenty of whispers. I did whole videos where I just whispered soothingly, breathing into the microphone, about this or that, always making sure to give a warm, sometimes teasing smile. I joked around some, was a bit sassy, and often talked idly and honestly about different things going on in my life. I also did nail painting, makeup applying, jewelry show and tell, cooking, baking, tea brewing, and eating videos.

I also did infrequent hilarious videos where I read out ugly comments in a dorky voice and then snickered madly to myself - I found ugly comments more funny than I did hurtful. Those videos were mostly for my own amusement.

The hardest part of ASMR, I think, was trying to show intimacy, smiles, and nurturing connection toward a camera. I had to pretend there was an audience there, sometimes getting a friend or a sister to pose for me on the other side of the camera. Other times I actually included them in the video, brushing and playing with their hair, for example, giving them a facial, or just basic physical care videos.

So after that, in addition to working out, singing, and dancing, I had ASMR.

In spite of this, I was actually highly skeptical. My teenage girlfriends were getting into astrology, guys, and this stupid "psychic" reality TV show by some asshole named Don Kanonji. I thought it was all ridiculous. I didn't believe in hokey things like astrology, and seeing ghosts myself, I certainly didn't believe in fake psychics. I believed in Buddhism and spirits, but not God or psychics. I didn't believe in things I couldn't witness. I also passionately hated reality TV; horror and video games were more my genre. I watched my family and friends get into such things with distant contempt and disgust.

"But come on, Ichigo, don't you want to know if you're compatible with any guys?" they'd ask over their horoscopes.

"Sorry, compadre," I said, backing up. "Romance ain't really my thing. I don't need no man."

And I walked off. Single for life, I promised myself naively at thirteen.


	18. Chapter 18

18.

I'd had to do something before class that day. So I was walking to school through an unusual route, alone. That's how it started.

I heard running footsteps behind me, then I was by surprise slammed against a wall, surrounded by five gangster looking men. I kicked the man's hand from my throat and then kicked him away; he stumbled but stayed upright. I paused, staring around myself cautiously at the five smirking gangsters.

"Can I help you gentlemen with something?" I said flatly, sarcasm in my voice.

"You're that orange-haired bitch who beat the crap outta me in that street fight that time," said the lead gangster threatening me, cracking his knuckles. Ah. So he was from my time on the streets.

"Look, man, I defeated a lot of people during that time. You're going to have to be more specific," I snapped.

"Cocky. I like that." He grinned, revealing yellow teeth. I think I threw up a little in my mouth. "You've gotten hotter since then. With hair dyed like that… you're a gangster girl, right?"

"Sorry to burst your bubble," I said, my teeth gritted, "but this is my natural hair color. And I ain't interested."

He reached out to stroke my face. "Ah, come on, baby, don't be like that -" I bit his hand so hard blood spurted out; he hissed and yanked it back. I grinned, my mouth and teeth now bloody.

"You were saying?" I cooed.

He growled. "Alright, bitch, let's do this." And they moved in toward me - I tensed myself, preparing to fight -

Then all of a sudden someone got the drop on them from behind. Abruptly, men were flying, whirling, and being kicked in all directions with yelps, and when they were all lying moaning on the ground, a teenage boy was standing there.

He was obviously mixed race, big, broad shouldered, tall, and dark skinned, with brown hair and eyes and massive, muscular arms. Later, I would learn he had an upper arm tattoo and wore a gold coin chain around his neck, but right now he was wearing a school uniform and gazing at me quietly. I recognized it. That was the uniform for the boys' middle school Keigo went to.

"Are you alright?" he asked, deep voice, slight Hispanic accent.

"Yeah, thanks," I said, relaxing, surprised. "You know, I could have handled them."

"Just because you can handle them doesn't mean you should have to," he said simply. He was pretty stoical; he struck me as the strong, silent type.

"Who are you?" I asked curiously.

"Yasutora Sado. I just moved back here from Mexico. I am new." He bowed his head solemnly in greeting.

"Yeah, I know the school you go to," I said. "Kurosaki Ichigo. I go to the sister school across the way. I'll have to pay you back for that some time." I nodded to the groaning thugs. "Talk about arms of steel. You're pretty strong."

"I'm just glad I could help," he said softly, and turned to walk off back toward school like nothing had happened. Hands on my hips, I looked after him in fond amusement. He was a little understated, but he seemed like a good guy.

And that might have been the end of it, if I hadn't been walking down the street one day a while later and heard shouts and thumps coming from an alleyway. Cautiously, I walked into the alleyway - and my eyes widened.

The gang from before had Yasutora Sado surrounded, and was beating on him with brass knuckles. And he just stood there. Stoically and passively. Taking it.

"Hey!" I shouted, taking out my cell phone, and they all whirled around to face me. "Hello," I said urgently into the phone, "I need an ambulance, I'm on Block 36 -"

The thugs started laughing. "Aww, she's calling an ambulance for her friend -!"

Then I smirked and pointed at them, counting. "I need enough medical attention for one, two, three, four, five men please." I threw the phone to the ground, my eyes hard.

"Bitch -!" they roared, charging toward me, but in a narrow alleyway like this one they could only come one or two at a time and I had the advantage. I leaped upward, whirling out in punches and kicks, and in under a minute they were all down for the count.

I walked over to a surprised Sado and stuck out my hand, grinning. "Need some help up? Now we're even," I said cheerfully. He slowly got to his feet, bloody and beaten. "Hey, can I ask you something? Why didn't you do anything while they were beating the crap out of you? You defeated them no problem last time."

Sado looked down. "I was born in Okinawa," he whispered at last. "My parents died when I was young, so I was sent to live with my abuelo, my grandfather, in Mexico. I have a bit of a temper problem. I used to get into fights a lot. But my grandfather told me I should only ever use my strength to defend another person.

"So after he died and I was sent back to Japan, that became my new resolution. Now, I only ever lift a hand to save other people."

"You won't even lift a hand to save yourself," I realized sympathetically. "I… I guess I get it. A lot of who I am stems from my mother dying in front of me when I was little, too." He looked up at me in surprise. "Hey, how about this?" I added brightly. "We start hanging out together after school. And if you're ever in a fight, you just call me up and I'll fight along with you. Then you'll have someone to try and protect, and a reason to use your fists."

"... You would do that for an almost total stranger?" He was staring at me.

I shrugged. "I love a good fight, and you seem like a nice guy," I said.

"... Then I will make a return pact with you," he said solemnly, surprising me. "If you're ever in a fight, and you think you can't win, and your life is on the line - just call me up. And I will use my strength to fight alongside you with these fists."

I paused, then smiled. "Sounds good," I said, bumping fists with him. "Now come on. Let's go get a smoothie." As we walked off, I added, "Hey, do you mind if I call you Chad? It sounds a lot like the name Sado…"

"You can call me anything you want as long as it's not a swear word," said Chad honestly. I don't think he meant it as a joke, but I laughed anyway.

"So what do you like to do?" I asked.

"Well, I'm in a band," he said. "I play bass. And… I like animals."

"You do, huh?" I smiled at his huge, intimidating size. "Let me guess. Small fluffy ones?"

"Yeah," he said in surprise. "How'd you know?"

"Just luck…"

And after that, Yasutora Chad became my friend.


	19. Chapter 19

19.

As I grew and got into high school, more changes came.

I started learning electric guitar alongside Chad's bass, for one thing, and being a guest with him alongside some of his band's concerts. Even Japanese rock concerts followed a very formulaic, almost pop sort of appearance and sound. But the nice thing was that, thanks to the presence of idol groups, no one blinked an eye at a band formation that shrunk and grew.

I found there was a certain appeal to it, rock concerts - electric guitar wailing, singing as loud as I could into the mic, hair a mess, sweaty.

Chad and the guys and me would occasionally have some drinks afterward, and usually aside from some good cheer we were left alone. Once a guy came up to me and Chad and made some pretty racist, suggestive comments about what I must like sexually. I won't repeat them; they were that disgusting.

I punched the guy so hard across the face I knocked out two of his teeth. Chad stared at me, his eyebrows risen.

"What?" I said casually, shrugging, going back to my drink. "He was annoying."

I had also started teaching my sisters about puberty, and about how to fight and defend themselves, just as I'd once taught them about seeing dead spirits. It was the correct big sisterly thing to do. Karin loved learning how to fight, punch, and kick, but she didn't take news of puberty nearly as calmly as Yuzu did.

"WHAT?!" She shot to her feet. "You mean I'm going to have to bleed out of my butt one week a month for THAT MANY DECADES?!"

"Calm down, Karin-chan," Yuzu sighed, she and I both looking amused and exasperated.

I began taking the train alone a lot as I got older, exploring Tokyo on my own. Piss Alley, a long street full of bizarre food stalls, was fun, as was the Harajuku fashion district, and cat and themed cafes. I took to sitting outside a particular robot-themed cat cafe with a book on Sunday afternoons.

At Karakura High, all my friends came back together. Tatsuki, Orihime, and I joined Chad and Keigo in the same high school class, all of us wearing our new grey uniforms. Mizuho was in an upper level class, but she did introduce us to some other girls, namely a frizzy-haired bespectacled flirtatious lesbian named Chizuru, a quiet track star bookworm named Ryou, a shy little crafty girl who loved stuffed animals named Michiru, and a messy-haired tactless and gossipy girl with her shirt hanging open named Mahana. Meanwhile, Keigo introduced us to his friend Mizuiro, a cute, smiley little prep who turned out to be an expert at getting it with older women.

With Mizuho joining us at lunchtimes - in one of two main places, either underneath a tree near the baseball diamond or on top of the flat school roof - I had my whole, huge group around me at last. We had drama occasionally, but we always got through it and we stuck together.

I continued with my trend of working out and practicing fight moves but refusing to do any professionally related fighting, frustrating Tatsuki and Mizuho to no end. Instead, my hobbies were mostly musical: two kinds of more modern dance, singing, and the electric guitar. I also wrote poetry and songs. I still had my ASMR videos hobby, and I still had all my media loves, from horror movies to big classical novels to punk rock music and video games.

I was now firmly established as the mother in my family's household, cooking, cleaning, and nursing. I still loved spicy food, health food, and tea. I kept ready and fashion trendy.

I also got into politics in high school. Chizuru introduced me to feminism and political thought, and I started a political blog of my own. I joined her women's association and lgbtq association at school. Feminism I found was a natural extension for me - I was already half a feminist anyway. I began doing women's empowerment related reading in addition to my classics and poetry, and I actually learned a lot.

It seemed like everything was falling into place, with one surprising addendum: I'd gone from being an expert at sensing ghosts, to helping them.

I never made mistakes anymore, that was true, but it had started because some ghosts just needed somebody to talk to. I provided that for them, and from there it wasn't a big jump to actually helping them find peace when they needed somebody to do something for them, such as leave an offering or clean a place up. Once I began offering my exorcising services, ghosts all over Tokyo began finding me and asking for help from me, in overwhelming and ever increasing numbers, growing more and more distinct to my eyes.

And that is where the second part of my story begins.

* * *

Author's Note: Chapter 20 begins canon. Rukia is coming. Chapters will now come less frequently, not because I'll be writing less but because for canon they will be longer.

I realize it sort of all came down at once in this chapter, but I kind of wanted it to have that feeling. All these new changes come to Ichigo in high school, and she's just starting to figure everything out in a rush, and then BAM - Shinigami.

Here comes the fun part. Here we go.


	20. Chapter 20

20.

The skateboarders lay scattered all over the alleyway, bleeding from various places. I had my foot on top of a moaning one's chest, smirking.

"I don't show much mercy for someone who ruins some poor little girl's final resting place," I said spitefully. "The kid died here last week, and you've smashed into offerings for her doing skateboard tricks… what… three times now?"

The proof was the vase of flowers currently smashed over on its side in the alleyway behind me.

I took up the guy's skateboard, and broke it over my knee. He shouted. "Here," I said, throwing the two pieces of the skateboard away. "I just made it easy for you not to do that again. You ever come here again, you son of a bitch, and people will be bringing you flowers. Got it?"

I leaned over to glare him in the eye, hands on my hips.

"Y-yes… yes… please… have pity on me…" I supposed a teenage girl who could down five grown men without a scratch frightened him. I use the term 'grown' very loosely here. They were all hairy and immature and they reeked.

"Well, normally I would," I said slowly, mock thoughtful. He looked hopeful, and then I smirked. "But you tried to grab my butt when I first walked in here, so -" I smashed my foot into his face, breaking his nose.

"Shit!" he hissed, rolling over onto his side. None of the others were unconscious, but I was pretty sure they were all pretending they were roadkill. Maybe if they lay still enough, I wouldn't bother them again.

Scoffing, I stalked back out of the alleyway.

While I was picking up my book bag, the ghost of the little girl from the alleyway floated up beside me. "I beat the shit out of them and scared the piss out of them, so with that full internal clean-out they shouldn't come here again," I said. "But if they do, you let me know, okay? I'll bring a fresh vase of flowers tomorrow."

"Alright. Thank you for your help. Now I can rest peacefully, Onee-chan." The little pigtailed girl smiled. Then she added admiringly, "That was amazing, what you did back there."

I gave her a cheerful, amused smile. "Let's just say I have some experience with that sort of thing. I'm glad it was put to good use. Try not to attract any more trouble, okay?" I added, half joking.

"Okay." She nodded shyly, sheepish.

"Rest in peace and pass on quickly," I said, lifting a hand in farewell, and then I began the walk home. My footsteps hurried as I passed down Karakura city streets. It was sunset, almost evening, after a long day at school and then helping the dead. I was still in my school uniform, and I was usually making dinner by this time.

I walked in the back door, slid off my shoes, and hurried into the family room. "Sorry," I said, harried, immediately going to the kitchen to get out dinner ingredients and throwing down my book bag. "I know. I'm late."

"Your sisters were starving!" my father boomed, faux indignant.

"Yeah, and I was helping a little dead girl, so the starving had to wait an hour!" I snapped back, faux irritated.

"You're still seeing more of them, Ichi-nee?" Karin asked curiously. My family was sitting ready at the dinner table.

"What do you mean?" said my father, bewildered.

"Onee-chan's been seeing more ghosts than ever lately. It's a lot of pressure," said Yuzu helpfully.

"And I'm only now hearing about this because…?" my father wondered, bewildered.

"Because you're immature and we make better confidants than you?" Karin returned.

"Hey -!" my Dad began.

"Well, actually, Dad, it's kind of true. You'd have just given me a pep talk on how awesome seeing ghosts supposedly is," I said while cooking. "Well meant, but not helpful."

Dad ran, faux crying, to the memorial of Mom. "Mother!" he wailed. "Maybe it's because they've hit puberty but our daughters treat me like dirt! What should I do?!"

He knew she wasn't going to answer. I didn't know why he always asked.

"First," said Karin flatly, "take down that stupid memorial picture."

"I like the memorial of Mom… It reminds us of her, Karin-chan…" Yuzu protested, frowning.

Karin sighed. "I don't have a problem with a memorial, Yuzu. I'm talking about the photograph. He zeroed in on a picture of her laughing and then photoshopped her giant laughing head into a picture of a cherry blossom viewing festival."

I snorted in amusement. "Not even her whole body," I agreed, smiling. "Just her giant head."

"Well, it is a little weird…" Yuzu admitted uncertainly, trying to be polite. "Oh, by the way, Onee-chan!"

"You've got a new visitor," Karin finished.

I whirled around to find the ghost of an old man in a suit and tie with greying hair and square glasses floating there. "You've got to be fucking kidding me!" I shouted in disbelief, finally losing my temper. The old man shied back, uncertain. I sighed, clinched my eyes shut, ran a hand through my hair. "Go away," I said, irritation tightening my voice. "Just - go away. Hang out somewhere else inside my house. I'll - deal with you when I can, okay?" I was trying not to yell. He treated into the depths of the house, and now I felt like shit.

"Poor Ichi-nee. School, extracurriculars, being a Mom, and helping the dead find peace. She can see them, hear them, talk to them, even touch them. The ultimate threat. Must be tough being in such high demand, Ichi-nee," said Karin.

"But I don't know, Karin-chan. I'd like to be able to see like Onee-chan, wouldn't you?" said Yuzu excitedly.

"Nah, I don't even believe in ghosts," said Karin casually.

"That's some impressive denial, Karin, willfully ignoring what's right in front of you," I said, turning the stove off and setting the pot of spicy stew on a different burner.

"Eh, it's not that hard. If I refuse to believe in them, it's like they don't exist. Real cleansing of the system. I honestly recommend it," said Karin, nodding.

I chuckled. "I'll have to try that," I mused. "Blind denial. Dinner's ready!"

* * *

The next morning, I got up early and did my morning workout as usual. I came back, took a quick shower - I took a long shower in the evening and an early one in the morning after working out - gathered up the vase of new flowers, and started making breakfast.

Dad came out in a suit with a briefcase. "Going somewhere?" I said in surprise.

"I've got a conference," he said, looking, as usual, more serious around work. "Tell Karin and Yuzu I'll be home tomorrow morning, okay?" He was already half out the door. But that was nothing unusual. Dad could be kind of absent minded and spontaneous sometimes.

"Sure," I said curiously. "I'll hold down the fort."

"I knew I could count on you, my beautiful daughter Ichigo -!" he cried, goofing off and getting dramatic again, waving an expansive arm.

"Oh, just go away," I snapped, pretending embarrassment and annoyance. He grinned and left, and I smiled in the aftermath.

Karin and Yuzu came in. I set breakfast down in front of them and gave them the news of Dad's departure. We were all sitting around the kitchen table eating breakfast - sweet natto, fruit, and green tea - and Karin turned on the TV to the morning news across the room from us.

The news made me frown in concern. On a block not too far from our house, a whole street had been torn to pieces by some great explosion. The weirdest part? Nobody could figure out what had done all the damage. There was no visible cause. Long, grating curls had been torn away from the lower buildings and asphalt, like a clawed giant had made a grab down an entire street.

"Ichi-nee? What's wrong?" said Yuzu, seeing my expression.

I shook my head and turned back to her, giving her a warm smile. "Nothing," I said cheerfully, pretending nothing was indeed wrong. "Just be careful out there today, okay?"

Karin was watching me in serious concern.

* * *

I didn't walk to school with my friends that day. I went a different way instead, to stop by the little ghost girl's alleyway and bring her the new vase of flowers. I came up to the alleyway, expecting her to appear - but no one appeared.

"Hey!" I called, frowning, looking around. Had she passed on already?

Suddenly, I heard her scream from the street beyond, followed by a strange, high-pitched shriek, a kind of roar. I ran out into the street, just in time for explosion after explosion to rend huge claw marks in the sides of all the surrounding buildings. People screamed and started running in different directions.

But, more distinctly - I heard another roar, and the little girl's scream.

I ran toward that sound, in the opposite direction of all the running people, like a fish upstream, swimming through clouds of smoke leftover from the explosion. Then the smoke cleared - and I saw it. I froze up, shaking in fear, all the blood draining from my face and instinctive terror gripping my heart.

I hadn't been that frightened by something in a very long time.

The roaring thing was a giant monster, shaped like an insect, as tall as a building. It had a hole through its chest in exactly the same place as a ghost's chain would be, and a white skull mask for a face, like some bizarre ancient Japanese spirit from mythological lore. It roared again, that high pitched, howling shriek, then it skittered forward.

It was what had been attacking the city all along.

It was chasing the ghost of the little pigtailed girl, who was running toward me. "Onee-chan!" she called, distressed.

"RUN!" I shouted, and together we sprinted away from the monster, feeling it ever gaining on us.

"What is that thing?!" she called to me, afraid.

"I don't know!" I admitted. "Just keep running!"

Suddenly, she tripped and fell behind. I paused, feeling the monster gaining on us - then swore and ran back to get her. "Come on! Stand up!" I pleaded, kneeling over her. Then I felt the monster directly above us and I looked up in panic, about to meet my end -

But, abruptly, a person in black samurai robes was before me, wielding a katana sword. She unsheathed her sword, and stopped the monster from reaching me with a neat thump. She was small, delicate, and pale, with shoulder length dark hair and violet eyes. She looked to be about my age, but I could never have done any of the things she was about to do.

She shoved the monster away with her sword. It roared and retreated. She leaped upward, floating in the air, and slashed through its mask in a great horizontal shower of dark blood. It roared in pain. She landed on the ground, then used that to leap up higher into the air, very high, and as she went down she cut through the monster's head in one neat stroke. It dissolved in one last shriek, and was gone.

The girl landed gracefully on the ground and sheathed her sword in a single movement. Her expression had never changed from its calm, expressionless dignity.

I stood to my feet, taking deep breaths, shaken. "Hey!" I called after her; she'd been about to just walk away, like nothing had happened between us and she hadn't just saved my life.

The girl in the black samurai robes looked back over her shoulder at me, the person she had saved, and the little ghost girl behind me. Her eyes landed on the ghost girl first, she made to move forward - and then she took a closer look at me.

An expression I couldn't define passed across her face. She seemed oddly shaken. In a moment, she was not there anymore. As if she had never been.

I know now who I reminder her of - who I looked like. It must have been bizarre, seeing Shiba Kuukaku's face with warm autumn coloring on my mother's body. But back then I knew nothing.

I stared after her, hearing people begin to calm down in the aftermath, in the street behind us.

"Another explosion! How terrifying!"

"What could be doing this?!"

I looked around at them in disbelief. I knew they wouldn't have seen the ghost of the little girl. But… that sounded almost like they hadn't seen any of it. The giant insect monster, the floating girl in the samurai robes with the sword. They'd seen none of it.

So either I was losing my mind… or those two things had both been spirits. Fighting, battling spirits.

The paramedic alarms began sounding behind us. I decided in that moment seriously not to tell them a single damn thing. I'd already been locked up inside a white van struggling once in my life, and I had no desire to repeat the experience.

* * *

I was lying on my bed that night after dinner, still wondering what on earth had happened today. Karin and Yuzu's shouts and the bleeps from downstairs indicated a video game was being played, and normally I would be down there playing competitively and mischievously with them, but tonight I couldn't concentrate.

I stared at the moon out my bedroom window and wondered… who the hell had she been?

Suddenly a black butterfly fluttered straight through my closed bedroom window, passing through in rather the same way a spirit would. I sat up, confused - and then the samurai spirit girl appeared, the same one from earlier, floating straight through my bedroom wall and lowering until her sandals touched the floor.

"H-hey." I backed up nervously on my bed, scowling - a default reaction to fear. "Who the hell are you?! What are you doing here?!"

She never even glanced in my direction. "It's close," she murmured instead, staring straight ahead of herself, brow furrowed, not looking at me.

I gathered up my courage, and decided I refused to be intimidated by a diminutive elf in feudal era reenactment gear. I stood to my feet, walked over calmly, leaned down to her level, and flicked her in the forehead.

"Hey, spirit girl," I said, sticking my face right up close to hers. "Don't ignore me when I'm talkin' to you."

The girl's eyes widened. "You… can see me? And… touch me?" she asked disbelievingly.

"Yeah," I said, glaring. "And I want to know what you're doing invading my goddamn house. What, you just invade my home and then you don't even acknowledge me when I ask who you are? Who the hell does that?"

Her expression turned serious. "You're the girl from the street today, aren't you?"

I straightened calmly. "Nothing gets past you, does it?" I asked ironically, hands on my hips. "It's good to know my town is being protected by someone with such mental acuity."

"Shut your mouth, human, before I shut it for you," she said, flushing. "I am commanded not to kill a human without it being under my orders, but don't test me." She reached up to grab my face, and I knocked her hand away.

"Look, I don't give a shit who you are," I snapped. "But touch me and I'll rip your hand off."

We glared at one another for a moment.

"Fine," the girl forced out at last. "You should not be able to see me because I am a Shinigami. Simple enough?"

"Shinigami. You mean those ancient spirits who come for dead souls?" I frowned, puzzled. "I've heard about them…" I was immediately suspicious.

"Exactly. I am from the afterlife, a place called the Soul Society. I am here to vanquish a Hollow, one of the evil spirits from the street today, a thing that preys on dead and living souls alike," said the girl seriously.

"And you also come for dead souls?"

"Correct. We send them on to the Soul Society, in preparation for eventual reincarnation. Shinigami control the universal flow of life and death on this earth."

"And you live in the Soul Society?"

"Also correct."

"So you're honestly telling me… that you believe… you are an ancient spirit that comes for dead souls… and you are here to vanquish an evil spirit monster… and you regulate the flow of life and death?" I asked slowly.

The girl blinked. "Yes. That is what I am telling you."

"Right. And I'm the Easter Bunny," I said sarcastically. "Surprise!"

The girl's eyes narrowed. "Do not mock the Shinigami! You arrogant human! You see ghosts yet you do not believe in spirits that help pass on ghosts?"

"Whoa. You're serious?" I asked disbelievingly, sobering.

She sighed. "Yes," she said, as if I was testing her patience enormously. "Yes, I am."

"Okay," I said slowly. "Shinigami girl? You mind if I call you that? Look, my father studies medicine. I don't know if you know this word, but what you are going through is called a delusion." I took on a calm bedside manner. "Through no fault of your own, your mind is telling you something that is not true."

"I know what a delusion is!" she snapped, flushing. "And I'm telling you, I'm not under one!"

"Then answer me this," I said in a cheerful, matter of fact sort of way. "I've been able to see the dead all my life, but I've never been able to see Shinigami before. If I've always been able to see ghosts… why haven't I ever seen more of you? You can't be the only one."

The Shinigami paused, then rallied. "Fine. Then I will prove it to you," she said, tossing her head high, and she unsheathed her sword and motioned it toward - the ghost of the bespectacled old man, who had just floated through my bedroom wall into the room.

"NO!" I called, sprinting forward. "Shinigami girl, you're going to destroy hi -!"

"Binding Spell, the First. Sai!" She waved her hand, and my arms and legs sprang together; I fell over flat on the floor. I struggled but she had me bound by some invisible cords.

"Damnit!" I would have called for Karin and Yuzu, but the last thing I wanted was to get them involved in this.

"Relax, human. You are under what is called a kido spell, a high level incantation only a Shinigami can cast. Now watch this -" She waved her sword high.

"Goddamnit, Shinigami girl, that's what drunk people say right before they do something that ruins -!" I paused, my eyes widening. "Whoa…" I breathed.

For she hadn't cut him down with the blade of her sword at all. She put the sheath end to his forehead, then released the sword from his forehead. A glowing blue stamp that said "RELEASE" appeared in its place. He began to glow and dissolve into blue.

Tears filled his eyes. "P-please," he whispered. "I don't want to go to Hell."

The Shinigami girl smiled, a proud ivory figure before him. "What is waiting for you is not Hell. It is the Soul Society. Unlike Hell, you may find happiness there."

The man dissolved into a little blue dot, and a black butterfly appeared, carrying the dot up through the ceiling and beyond - to the Soul Society.

Shinigami girl turned to look at me. "I suppose you believe me now?" she asked with wry amusement, quirking an eyebrow. I swallowed, shaken and silent. "Very well," she sighed, feigning a great struggle, rolling her eyes dramatically. "I will explain, so that even a brat like you can reach completely understanding and acceptance."

"Brat?" I raised an eyebrow. "I'm the same age as you, and a lot taller I might add."

"You're not that much taller than me." She scowled, resentful.

"I think the phrase 'diminutive elf in feudal era reenactment gear' literally came to mind."

"You know, I don't have to be explaining this to you."

"Alright, alright. By the way, is dress like yours common in the Soul Society?" I added, genuinely curious.

"Yes. We age slower than humans - ten years for every one of yours - so we progress slower as well," she said simply.

I calculated backward. "So in the Soul Society… it's still hundreds of years ago," I realized. "And… the dominant culture is Japanese?"

"The original Shinigami sector - most of its originators were Japanese," said Shinigami girl simply. "The people with reiatsu, or spirit energy, who stepped in to do the regulation work were Japanese."

"So… if it's feudal Japan… does that mean no medical advances? Or women's empowerment?" I wondered, becoming skeptical again. "This wonderful Soul Society isn't sounding so wonderful to me."

"Our reiatsu heals things far less invasively and in ways humans never could," said the Shinigami girl loftily. "And as for women's empowerment…" She became uncomfortable. "There is a Shinigami Women's Association, and we are ruled by a council; the Soul King is only a figurehead. We do have wealthy royalty and nobility, but they have no more political power than anyone else. The people with the power are those with reiatsu, those who become Shinigami, noble or not. We take modern political ideas and fit them into a more ancient framework."

"But… that would only work in some cases, wouldn't it? I mean, feudal Japan was polygamous. Powerful men could have multiple wives. How the hell does women's empowerment handle that?"

"Are you asking me to tell you how marriage works in the Soul Society?" said Shinigami girl skeptically.

"You can't expect me not to be curious. I'm going to the place someday, and women's empowerment is important to me."

She sighed. "Very well. In Soul Society, there is both monogamous and polygamous marriage, according to the wills of the participants. Polygamous marriage is seen as gender equal. A woman can have multiple husbands, or a husband can have multiple wives, but if one person marries multiples, none of those multiples can be involved in other couplings."

"So the more powerful the man, the less likely that he will agree to being one of multiple husbands," I interpreted.

"True, but the same could be said of powerful women," Shinigami girl pointed out. "They have that choice too."

"... Point," I admitted. "Sounds complicated. So you were going to give me this… great explanation."

The Shinigami girl nodded. She sat down, took out a pad of paper, and started scribbling. She turned the paper around, and showed me literally the most horrible artwork I had ever seen from an adult. I couldn't even tell what was going on in the drawing. I gathered that it was a diagram, and it was supposed to explain everything.

I was pretty sure I actually understood less of what was going on now.

"What's wrong?" she asked flatly, looking at me.

I smiled. As an artist, I didn't want to make her feel bad by insulting her art. "Uh… nothing," I said. "It's just… I'm more of an auditory learner?"

She sighed at my apparent stupidity. "There are two kinds of souls in this world," she said. "Whole souls are all souls that are not mutated and deformed. They are ordinary souls, either living or dead apparitions. All humans are of this type, as are all of the so-called 'ghosts' you know. Whole souls are the good spirits.

"Hollows are evil spirits. They attack the living and the dead indiscriminately, and devour their souls.

"Shinigami have two principal duties. First, to guide Whole souls on to the Soul Society with Konso, the ritual you have just witnessed… and second, to vanquish Hollows."

"What happens to the souls the Hollow ate?" I asked.

"They are released into the Soul Society." Shinigami girl nodded. "A surprisingly intelligent question," she congratulated me.

I sighed. "Thanks," I said, not even bothering to refute at this point. "Why was the Hollow attacking that girl today?"

"For a meal? I am not sure," Shinigami girl admitted. "We have not been able to understand all of the Hollow's behavioral patterns."

"So that's your mission now. To vanquish a Hollow."

"Yes."

"So there's a Hollow out there in Karakura right now."

"Yes."

"And… YOU'RE JUST SITTING HERE?!" I exploded. She jumped. "What the hell is wrong with you?! Go kill it!"

Shinigami girl looked away in shame. "Actually… I have not been able to sense its presence for some time no -"

Abruptly, the high pitched, howling roar of a Hollow reached my ears. I paled and stiffened. "Uh… Shinigami?"

"What?" She looked around at me, puzzled. She really couldn't hear that?

"I don't think you need to look for the Hollow anymore. I think it found you."

"What on earth are you talking abou -?"

Then there was a particularly loud howl coming from right outside the house. Shinigami girl gasped and whirled around just as there was a crash and a girl's scream coming from the lower part of the house.

The new Hollow was attacking my home. And my sisters were right in its line of fire.


	21. Chapter 21

21.

"Karin! Yuzu!" I called in panic, flailing trapped on the floor, as the Shinigami ran with her sword into my bedroom doorway. "Wait! Let me free! That's my family being attacked, I have to help!" I called, desperate and angry.

But the Shinigami had paused in the doorway, staring at something down the hall.

"Onee-chan…" Yuzu's voice. She crawled into the doorway, covered in blood. "Onee-chan…"

"Yuzu!" My face twisted in helpless pain.

"Onee-chan… Please… I don't know what it is… It got Karin-chan… Please… Onee-chan… you have to save… Karin-chan…" She passed out.

I cried out as the Shinigami scampered away down the stairs.

"Wai -!" I began to call after her, but she was already gone. "Damnit…" I forced myself to my feet against the pressure, arms and legs still bound, and bunny hopped rather ungracefully down the stairs and into the room below. I shoved into the Shinigami, who had paused with her sword out.

"See? This is what happens when you don't free me from your stupid kido spell," I sniped.

"I thought I told you to stay upstairs -" she began in irritation, but I looked forward and felt my blood run cold, then red hot.

I could see them through a hole in the far wall. This Hollow was hulking and humanoid, Karin being dangled above the street in one of its massive hands. It was slowly squeezing her, suffocating her; she cried out.

"Karin!" Even I'm not sure what happened next. All I knew was that I had to protect my sister - at any cost. I could not let her die as my mother had died. I fought against the pressure, fought against the pressure - and in a great burst of light, my limbs were freed, I could move again.

The Shinigami had paused, stunned. "Wait!" she called belatedly, but I had grabbed my wooden kendo sword and run out into the street.

"Ichi-nee! Run!" Karin cried, seeing me, but I began fighting the Hollow with the wooden sword as it took swipes at me. The wooden sword was a pathetic substitute for the real thing, and in very little time the Hollow broke through the sword in a crash of wood slivers and shoved me away, ruining the blade I'd had since childhood. I skidded along the ground.

"Karin!" I called desperately, sitting upright.

"I found you," the Hollow whispered in an echoing, hoarse voice, and it made a grab for me with its free hand. I leaped out of the way in time, but the Shinigami had appeared, cutting at the Hollow's arm holding Karin. The Hollow roared and let go of Karin, who was dropped from a great distance, the Hollow disappearing momentarily as if heading to another spiritual plane.

I caught Karin as she fell, but she was unconscious, pale and unmoving. "Karin!" I called, shaking her, in tears, nearly losing it. "Karin! Please!"

"Get a hold of yourself! Even your sister upstairs isn't seriously injured, and neither of your sisters' souls have been eaten yet," said the Shinigami, standing before me with her sword poised, her back to me.

"Are you sure?" I said urgently, shaken.

"Positive. I see. The Hollow this afternoon wasn't after the ghost of that girl either." She sounded thoughtful, speaking almost to herself. "It was after a source of greater reiatsu."

"What do you mean?" I asked, frowning.

"Until now, your power has been almost completely sealed. That's why no Hollows came after you, and you never saw a Shinigami, and no Shinigami ever sensed you. It takes someone with enormous reiatsu to see a Shinigami or a Hollow, more reiatsu than any living human is supposed to have. And to break a top notch kido binding spell as a human, or confuse a Shinigami to the point where they can no longer sense Hollows when near you… that is unthinkable."

"So you're saying… suddenly my reiatsu is flooding when it wasn't before. Why?" I asked.

"This is just conjecture - but perhaps it's because of the ghost of that girl you had befriended. Her, and others like her. In other words, if you hadn't decided to help ghosts, to embrace your powers and interact with them instead of shutting them away, your enormous power would never have been unlocked. And now it has been. You've come into contact with so many dead people recently, it has unlocked your abilities.

"Hollows will eat all souls, but they prefer those with high levels of reiatsu. These Hollows weren't looking for just any soul… They were looking for a human soul with enormous reiatsu. They went after the ghost of that little girl, but it wasn't her. They looked in the city block close to where you live, but the spirit wasn't there. They attacked your house and searched for your sisters, but though they have some presence, even when around the ghosts you interact with the source of the energy wasn't them either.

"These two Hollows… they were after you."

I stood slowly. "... Me?" I whispered. "They sensed me from all the way outside Karakura?"

"That is correct," said the Shinigami softly.

"... My fault," I whispered in realization. "This is my fault. This thing is just going to keep attacking the people I care about."

I had long ago stopped trusting anyone to do any kind of saving for me. I certainly didn't trust the Shinigami themselves to do it. And my life… in comparison to the lives of those I loved, my life was insignificant.

I put Karin down and pushed the Shinigami aside, catching her by surprise. She cried out and fell to the ground. I sprinted forward just as the Hollow reappeared. "Wait till I'm gone, then kill it!" I called back desperately over my shoulder, running straight toward the Hollow's opening mouth -

"NO!" I heard her scream distinctly, and then the Shinigami was in front of me, taking the attack instead.

I paused, stunned, as she struggled in a shower of blood, crunching between its teeth. At last, it spat her back out, retreating and disappearing once more, and she lay there dying in a pool of her own blood.

"Shinigami," I whispered. Why would she do that for me?

"You idiot…" she hissed from the ground, irritable to the last. "Thinking it is over if you give it your soul… That is not how this works..."

"I - I'm sorry," I said blankly, standing above her. "I just - I just wanted to help -"

"I know what you wanted to do," she said simply. She sighed in frustration. "At this rate we will all die."

She shoved herself upright with effort, in a sitting position, leaning against an electric pole. She took up her sword, and I didn't know at first what she wanted to do. She seemed to be steeling herself for some sort of action.

"Do you want to save your family?" she asked steadily, looking me challengingly in the eye.

"Of course! Is there a way?" I said immediately, hooking onto the words like a lifeline.

"There is just one way. You become a Shinigami." I paused, surprised. She lifted her sword to me. "This is known as a zanpakuto," she said, deceptively calm, even as the Hollow reappeared nearby. "If I run it through the center of your being, through your heart, I can let my powers flow into you. I don't know if it will work - but it's the only plan we've got," she finished grimly.

I smiled. "Give me the sword, Shinigami," I said warmly. "If it's all we've got, it'll have to do. I'll make it work."

At last, the Shinigami smiled. "You may be an irritating human, but you are a brave one. And my name is not Shinigami. It is Kuchiki Rukia. Call me Rukia," she said softly.

"Kurosaki Ichigo. Call me Ichigo." I took the sword; she pointed it toward my heart. I was terrified, but I smirked, attempting to be cheerful. "See you on the other side," I joked. Or, well, I meant it as a joke.

I tried to focus on the sword as she moved. On the sword, and the ghosts I helped, and my reasons for fighting - my family and friends.

She plunged the sword through my chest, my hands open around the blade and my body moving forward, ready to meet her. Everything inside my body fizzed and pulsed once, and then nothing.

I still don't know what happened directly afterward. Mostly, I think, because it wasn't me doing the acting anymore. It was something inside of me, something deeper and far more instinctual.

* * *

What I remember next is that I was standing in front of the Hollow, in full Shinigami regalia, holding a sword as wide and as long as my body. The sword had to be at least three times the size of Rukia's. I didn't know what that signified. Behind the Hollow, I could see Rukia kneeling in bloody white under robes, staring at me with wide eyes, and my physical body lying prone beside her. Behind that, the unconscious Karin.

I don't remember feeling different, but I do remember that I was a lot faster and took hits a lot easier. In a few quick kendo moves - the giant ass sword moved somehow as a natural extension of me - I had cut through the Hollow's head and it dissolved in a flood of blue.

I had done it, I realized distantly. I had saved my sisters.

My memories of that night are very confused. I think the world started spinning, and then nothing. I think I must have passed out.

But when I woke up, everything was different.


End file.
